What's next for Iraq?

Iraq is a mess. Those for words seem to finally be getting bipartisan support. Of course it has only taken 3154 coalition lives and upwards of 50,000 Iraqi lives to gain the attention of the President. The election in November seemed to help considering only one day after the election results were in, Rumsfeld issues is resignation and the Bush rhetoric about the war began to change, somewhat. The news is riddled with stories about NATO nations pulling their troops from the region continuing the hemorrhaging of Bush’s “coalition of the willing.”

Today the report prepared by a bipartisan group calling for serious changes in the way the war is being handled, has been presented its findings to the President and it will now be up to him and the assumed new Defense Secretary Robert Gates to either listen or ignore them. With an incoming Democratic Congress, the President can’t just ignore the commission’s findings like he did the 9/11 commission, placating the congress by listening and then doing very little about the findings. Still, real action will have to be seen and not promised.

Kofi Anan has declared civil war in Iraq, former Secretary of State Colin Powell has declared civil war in Iraq and even Matt Lauer has declared that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. We now find ourselves in the middle of a fight that we don’t understand, and can’t seem to win. What is really interesting is that two days before he tendered his “resignation”, Rumsfeld wrote a memo to President Bush outlining ways that he felt the Iraq strategy could change. I don’t know if it fell on deaf ears or if Bush didn’t care, but two days later he was without a job. Could the public perception of Rumsfeld be a tow the line mirage hung before a man who really did try and make a change? I guess we’ll just have to wait for his book to come out to see.

So, with so many people calling for change, maybe the President will finally see that planning an exit strategy that leaves Iraq with a stable government and a military that can defend itself isn’t “cutting and running” but how you actually plan and execute wars. The war has now gone on longer than our involvement in WW II, maybe we can get out before Iraq goes on longer than another war that tore our Nation apart.