Reading between the lines of "don't cut and run".

[Mechatanketra]

I was kinda surprised to find Murtha's recent speeches didn't just echo my own thoughts, but actually gave me something new to ponder: that technically/on paper, haven't we already "won" in Iraq? The country has no WMDs and Saddam's out of power. Touchdown and extra point kick.

But, as usual, I get a bit of treppenwitz, realizing that even as good as Murtha's points are, he may be unwittingly letting an even more significant point go without mention. And that's the fact that his question, if not allowed to be rhetorical, has light to shed on the ugly face behind the liberation talk.

No WMDs. No Saddam. Our nation must be, hence, absolutely safe from whatever threat it was that Bush had determined required the emergency measure of a preemptive strike. So ... what haven't we done? What, exactly, is the unfinished accomplishment for America that makes this a loss if we bring the boys home? What's left to "win"?

OK, Iraq's in shambles. They can't keep order. They may fall into civil war. But isn't that a task that can be accomplished by a UN peacekeeping force? Maybe they won't want the job, but we could ask ... yet that option is also generally seen as "cut and run". Huh. Why does it have to be us? Why is preserving order in Iraq only acceptable with us there?

The more you stare at that question, the clearer it becomes, I think. There's something being left unspoken by every single person (GOP or Dem) who equates withdrawal with defeat, the one word that answers all the questions above:

"Conquest".

They mean, we "win" when Iraq is ours. It's not about beating Saddam or Al Qaeda, it's about beating Iraq. The war will be considered a failure unless we can 'keep' Iraq in some sense (as a satellite if not just outright siezure). There's likely something Freudian about the oft-repeated comparison, "we broke it, we bought it" ... because of course, if we "bought" it, it's our property, broken or not.

[babylonsister]

1. Murtha threw out the guantlet to the repugs. It's a start, and a

necessary one. We shall see, but the wind has shifted, and it's finally towards minds that are thinking and will prevail.

[teryang]

2. Sunk costs are no costs

This is the antithesis of "we can't cut and run." Professional defense policy analysts as distinguished from amateur war profiteers drawn from corrupt corporate boardrooms know that cost benefit analysis is always prospective in application.

"You broke it you bought it" is also erroneous application of retrospective analysis to future cost commitments. After breaking something and being forced to sustain tremendous loss, does one continue to pursue the same destructive and unproductive actions at a continued loss?

Past loss is no justification to sustain future losses except in the irrational appeal to mass psychology thought up by masters of public opinion manipulation. The interests and their propaganda spokesperesons who brought us anthrax and "911 changed the world like Pearl Harbor" are the same interests who convinced the public for decades that there was no scientific proof that cigarettes caused cancer although it had been proven in the twenties by Dr. Richard Doll. The same corporate propagandists who devised the terms "sound science," and "fair and balanced," meaning anything but.

For years "shit happens" was the refrain from goose stepping followers to repudiate claims that right wing interests fabricated events like Rheinhard Heydrich to start wars and oppress opposition and dissent. The neo-conservative party cadre have had everything their way politically and it has resulted in failure and defeat. They have now morphed into the utopian architects of "democracy in the middle east." Perhaps they can produce some wonderful polity like Lebanon or Israel racked by violence and strife. It is quite evident that they are breeding a new kind of utopian fool. Things will not be allowed to just happen in Iraq. They are building a utopia with torture, death squads, and mangled bodies.