Staying The Course Of Failure

Vice President Dick Cheney crawled from the shadow of his bunker this week to throw a few pearls of wisdom to the little people. But when asked about his now-famous “Last Throes” comment, a stone-faced Cheney tersely confessed, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we’ve encountered [in Iraq].”

Anybody in Cheney’s small circle of radical neo-con friends, that is. But a long list of politicians, analysts and intelligence officers did. And they were ignored. That’s the tragedy of the Iraq invasion, and the reason Cheney and his assistant, President Bush, are now considered dangerously incompetent and no longer trusted by the public to administer foreign policy.

But these realities don't keep Republican lawmakers from clinging to the pseudo-strategy of “Staying The Course” in Iraq. Ignoring all evidence to the contrary, they insist that we should be patient, citing the killing of terrorist Zarqawi as a sure sign of progress. Which is like deciding to stay in a burning house because you find a ten-dollar bill on the floor.

From all first-hand accounts, Iraq continues to disintegrate. By any measure--IED explosions, civilian deaths, gas lines, electric service--life in Iraq is getting worse, not better. Growth in the ranks of Iraqi security forces has been offset by a splintering of militia factions along sectarian lines, producing torture and death squads with ethnic cleansing as their objective.

Average Americans understand that a few new school houses and a few more minutes of rationed electricity have no value in a community where kidnapping, rape, torture and indiscriminate death stalk every street, where people are caught between car bombs and so-called smart bombs on a daily basis.

Americans are also beginning to understand that open-ended occupation emboldens terrorists and empowers their recruiters, whereas deadlines motivate citizens in Iraq’s political center to establish control of their country. Iraq has faced numerous deadlines--to form a constitution, to hold elections, to form a cabinet--and they have been modestly effective.

So when Cheney, Rove and Bush bash deadlines, remember their track record and imagine how much better our nation and world would be if we had done the opposite. “Staying The Course” is no different. It is a course of continuing failure, stagnation and waste, and its supporters care more about staying in office than facing the reality of their party's mistakes.

By contrast, deadlines are the course of motivation and encourage the fleeting possibility of peaceful Iraqi self-determination.