Mission gone bad: You have permission to call it retreat

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/9099

Mission gone bad: You have permission to call it retreat
by Robert C. Koehler | Aug 2 2007

"The best strategic minds in both parties have argued for months that the answer is essentially to muddle our way out, cut our losses carefully and try to salvage what we can from a mission gone bad."

This isn't pretty. Not when you think about the glory we reveled in four years ago. A superpower swooped into Iraq, routed a dictator, toppled a statue. Our prez did the equivalent of a dance in the end zone aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Damn, we're good.

And now? All that glory is something at the back of the refrigerator. "A mission gone bad." Hold your nose and see what you can salvage. Here's Time magazine in its July 30 cover story, holding its nose, detailing the ignominy: "U.S. agricultural inspectors insist that, before it re-enters the U.S., Army equipment be free of any microscopic disease that . . . 'can wipe out flocks of chickens and stuff like that.'"

Bawk-k-k! Bawk-k-k!

This is what the backside of disaster looks like. Time calls it phased withdrawal, but you have permission to call it retreat. Suddenly America's best strategic minds are thinking about this. We have to get our troops out, plus all those civilians, including America-friendly Iraqis (yeah, sure). And then there's the equipment: tanks, trucks, helicopters, Humvees, the contents of 10 ammo dumps. But war also employs "downtime gear": vending machines, furniture, mobile latrines, computers, paperclips. The Pentagon will salvage as much of this stuff as it can, the magazine informs us (presumably sanitizing it first).

snip//

So it goes in Iraq. Scared American kids with guns run roughshod over the locals -- the "hajis" -- because that's their job. Their mission was conceived in arrogance and racism. It was doomed to fail and it deserved to fail. The great accounting must begin.
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[endarkenment]

1. meanwhile our troops are dying to save bush the embarassment

of presiding over the defeat. This is such bullshit.

[babylonsister]

2. You know I couldn't agree more. nt