Time To Make Lemonade

Robert Novack's column today (also see Talking Points Memo) makes the outlandishly plausible case that Bush is seriously considering an all-out withdrawal from Iraq following the election. Far from admitting defeat, such a move would admit nothing so much as complete incompetence. Near the end of Novack's frightening column, he inadvertently lays his finger on the essential nubbin of corrupt and fallacious thinking that has lacerated our policy toward the Middle East as a whole (I've taken the liberty of italicizing the lies):

The Kerry campaign, realizing that its only hope is to attack Bush for his Iraq policy, is not equipped to make sober evaluations of Iraq. When I asked a Kerry political aide what his candidate would do in Iraq, he could do no better than repeat the old saw that help is on the way from European troops….''We need to strengthen nation states,'' [David] Brooks wrote, calling for ''a multilateral nation-building apparatus.'' To chastened Bush officials, that sounds like an invitation to repeat Iraq instead of making sure it never happens again.

Apparently, Novack sees no distinction between the words "multilateral" and "unilateral". But what Novack thinks is neither here nor there. What the rest of the world thinks about such a distinction, however, is rather important. While Iraq had no ties to any major terrorist organizations before the war, today it is a different place. Kerry's "old saw" about allies is, you see, the only means to definitively win the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Simply put, we cannot leave. We cannot pull out. We cannot quit. Sure, Bush "fucked-the-bowlegged-poodle" (to steal a phrase), but now that the American Weenus is buried up to the short-&-curlies, we can't just yank it out (as it were). We've got to complete the act and sire some kind of a calmer, more connected, more integrated, more interdependent world. Forget European troops; the U.S. military is the only military big enough to handle this task. It's the other kinds of support that we need: corporate, humanitarian, political, etc. This isn't just a military effort goddamnit…and it's high time that conservative blabbermouths open their eyes to that fact.