This was from an e-mail discussion with a friend, and Greg-the-husband thought it merited its own blog entry. Hey, who am I to argue? If the poll numbers are to be believed, just about everyone thinks that it’s time to leave Iraq, admit the whole thing was a failure and blame Bush. I’m not saying those people aren’t entitled to their opinion, but here are the reasons that I don’t agree:

• I’m not as sure as everyone else that the war is some complete failure. I don’t know why it is that the image of people (men and women) actually voting and drafting a constitution stays in everyone’s consciousness for about 12 seconds. Our country’s foundation took us decades, if not centuries, to hash out and we still had to go through a civil war (and we come close to it from time to time still). We’re taking these guys who have been under the thick blanket of medieval fuedalism and totalitarianism for a millennium and trying to put them on the fast track in a couple years. But then that’s not good enough and we need to see that they “get it” constantly, and in ways that we can all understand by reading headlines half a world away. Of course they’ll respond to the new-found freedom by thrashing out their own civil discord (Sunnis vs. Shiites or whatever). We could all think that meant we were completely evil if it wasn’t the rule everywhere that oppressed people have been freed up. (Soviet Union breakup, end to Indian colonialism, end of apartheid, and so on).
• Things may be screwed up, but I think that it’s nearly impossible to know what the situation really is over there in the culture we’ve got right now. The war has been politicized, and no matter whose fault that is, it means that you can count on the old right/left lines being drawn. The MSM, who never like wars of any sort and don’t identify much with the military, suddenly have the culture war thrown in as well. When they see the military strike a great blow for the war effort and destroy an entire insurgent encampment (thus saving untold lives and relieving the tension of the surrounding towns) are they ever going to joyfully report that? On the other hand, goodness knows the military is bound to report glowingly of whatever is going on.
• Since I don’t trust any reports that can be spun, I tend to go with the hard numbers we all agree on — 2,000+ casualties on our side. Good grief! Does anybody get what an amazingly low number that is??? Of course nobody ever wants for anybody to die in a war, but since that’s not a reasonable expectation, shouldn’t it be judged by the standard of other wars? Here are a couple numbers from a quick Google search: Revolutionary War — lasted 80 months, 4,435 combat deaths; Civil War — lasted 48 months, 184,594 combat deaths; WW II — 44 months, 292,131 combat deaths (6,639 per month); Vietnam War — lasted 90 months, 47,369 combat deaths. Is it just because the only one most of us remember is the Gulf War (1 month, 148 combat deaths) that we’ve lost all track of what you can expect from a war?
• The other indisputable item is that terrorism skirmishes are breaking out in different places, like this recent horror in Jordan. But don’t we get that if the insurgents have taken to Muslim on Muslim violence (like today’s attacks on Muslims praying in mosques), it’s a sure sign that (a) they can no longer effectively take us out in large numbers, or even take hostages; and (b) they’re showing their hand — they can no longer hide behind the Koran. They’re opportunists as all guerrilla warriors are (as we were during the Revolution), and they will always do all they can. Noting that there’s been a major shift in what they can do ought to remind us that the war has been a huge success in preventing them from operating unfettered and in growing at the pace they did during the Clinton years.
• I don’t blame Bush for the Iraq war in any case. Don’t have anything more than a gut response on that, but that’s the way I feel. As for low numbers, … whatever. We’ve become obsessed with polls, but it doesn’t make them accurate, just handy. If it rained apple pie tomorrow, Bush’s approval numbers would go up. And conservatives — myself included — are cranky with Bush over a lot of things.
• If I thought the war was a failure and I thought it was Bush’s fault, I still wouldn’t think we need to come up with a date to pull out. For goodness’ sake, if we’re going to start with that, why don’t we just strap a target on everyone that’s still over there and let al Qaida know when we’re planning big gatherings? Part of the reason they launched the 9/11 attack is because they really believed that we were too spineless to ever go to war, and part of the reason they’ve scaled up the action now is because they really believe that we’ll never stick it out long enough to give a free Iraq a fighting chance. If I thought we’d done everything wrong up till now, I would still think this is the thing we should get right.