The Wall Street Journal: WE Will Fight, In Iraq

Well, I’ll tell you who’s not retreating from Iraq—the editors of the Wall Street Journal, that’s who!

Republican Retreat
July 9, 2007; Page A14

The last of the brigades President Bush ordered for his military surge in Iraq only arrived in the country last month, and they have been heavily engaged with al Qaeda in the Sunni triangle around Baghdad as part of the new military strategy. So it's especially distressing that Republican Senators should decide that this is the time to separate themselves from Mr. Bush on Iraq.

(The schweinhunds!)

"I do not doubt the assessments of military commanders that there has been some progress in security," Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declared on the Senate floor late last month. But that didn't stop Mr. Lugar from concluding that its chances of success are "very limited." Why? The "short period framed by our own domestic political debate" won't allow it, he says...

(That is in fact the most horrible admission ever by the Republican party; telling the world that American troops should come home now—because if they don’t it will cost the GOP biiiiggg again in next years elections! So *that’s* what it takes to make the GOP fold up on a failed war that costs hundreds of thousands of lives and created a new kind of slaughterhouse in Iraq. “Hey, you know us, we’d keep ‘em over there forever, it’s no skin off our ass how many of our kids get killed or maimed. But this is serious now—this thing could cost us our POLITICAL CAREERS! So that’s it, the GOP is bailing out.”)

Last week, New Mexico's Pete Domenici noisily joined this bandwagon, as have several other Republican Senators, some of whom face tough re-election fights next year.

Yup. This is as low as you can go in American politics—a de facto admission that the reason you kept our troops there this long, is because you didn’t really believe it would hurt your own election chances. The GOP and the conservatives are truly bottom-feeders; sociopaths.

Now remember: the editors are speaking here of the conservative Republican leadership that they endorsed for office. The WSJ is a conservative/GOP organ: it recommended the conservatives that it is now accusing of cowardice and careerism. Why *did* you recommend this party of cowardly careerists for high public office, WSJ?

The WSJ wants to continue the war. Victory may be just around the corner, if the US is willing to commit troops for another year. Or two. Or three. Or whatever:

...as retired General Jack Keane told the New York Sun: "The tragedy of these efforts is we are on the cusp of potentially being successful in the next year in a way that we have failed in the three-plus preceding years, but because of this political pressure it looks like we intend to pull out the rug from underneath that potential success."

The promise, after four years of war, has moved from “they’ll greet us with open arms” to “it’s just a few dead enders” to “there is a claim of potential for success from a retired general.” Oh really? That’s not what the Pentagon thinks. From the Times:

Robert Gates, the defence secretary, is drawing up plans to reduce troop levels in Iraq in anticipation that General David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, will not be able to deliver an upbeat progress report in September on the American troop surge.

The WSJ is “on drugs.” Even if we drive al Qaeda out, we still have a shitstorm of a religious and ethnic civil between Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds, an ethnic and religious struggle with untold oil reserves as the prize for the most genocidal—and we still have US soldiers continuing to stand at the wrong end of this shooting gallery. *That* scenario does not enter the WSJ’s calculus: even if you beat al Qaeda (and they can’t even promise that), you’ve still got a murderous civil war to “win.”

But give us more time, pleads the WSJ. And to show you they’re sincere—this is unprecedented, it’s never happened before—they are forming a new volunteer combat force to go to the area and relieve American combat troops who have already done two or more tours of duty. Can you believe it? It’s incredible, isn’t it? The editors of the Wall Street Journal are so sure of final victory and so convinced of the worthiness of the cause, that they themselves are going to leave their desks, enter basic training, and go to fight in Iraq as combat troops. That’s how sure they are that we’re going to stabilize Iraq within the next year or so, and this strategic alliance thing is going to pay off.

Yes, the editors of the WSJ want a piece of the action, before this whole Iraq thing is over. They’re not just a bunch of conservative desk jockeys who are trying to string this thing out, they’re going to put their money where their mouths are and FIGHT! Former editor Jude Wanniski is actually returning from his GRAVE to general the brigade of armed-to-the-teeth finance editors, senior reporters, trickle-down economics pundits and wannabe interns—as they conduct nightly house to house patrols in suspect terrorist havens and engage in streetfighting in Sadr City. That’s how convinced they are that victory is just around the corner, can you believe it? There’s nothing like it in the history of American journalism.

You find that hard to believe?

Well, then...would you believe...that the WSJ editors have announced that all their kids and grand kids who are eligible for combat have signed up to go and fight in Iraq for the next two years? They’re sending their own kids, would you believe it?

Okay... uhhh....

Would you believe--they're sending one very angry "supply-side" economics fan with a graph on a cocktail napkin?

Oh, forget it. They’re not fucking going, who am I kidding.