And of course you absolve the White House of having anything to do with this possible outcome. Bush’s hands are clean.

No and no…….and I’m curious as to why I raise your ire for simply not participating in verbally pushing his wagon off the cliff. As you said, history will mete out his reward for a botched execution of a non-justified gameplan. I don’t write history books, all I do is get to vote in the next election. That seems to me to be the next event I can do something about and where I am putting my attention.

If Bush was at all concerned with spreading democracy, here or abroad, he would leave Iraq immediately. It’s what the Iraqis want and it’s what Americans want.

Whenever I asked Iraqis what kind of government they had wanted to replace Saddam’s regime, I got the same answer: they had never given it any thought. They just assumed that the Americans would bring the right people, and the country would blossom with freedom, prosperity, consumer goods, travel opportunities. In this, they mirrored the wishful thinking of American officials and neoconservative intellectuals who failed to plan for trouble. Almost no Iraqi claimed to have anticipated videos of beheadings, or Moqtada al-Sadr, or the terrifying question ‘Are you Sunni or Shia?’ Least of all did they imagine that America would make so many mistakes, and persist in those mistakes to the point that even fair-minded Iraqis wondered about ulterior motives. In retrospect, the blind faith that many Iraqis displayed in themselves and in America seems naïve. But, now that Iraq’s demise is increasingly regarded as foreordained, it’s worth recalling the optimism among Iraqis four years ago.

I am inclined to believe rather that they engage in sectarian violence to a greater degree, overwhelm the ability of the Maliki government to cope and one day, the next Saddam finally wrests control again after this rendition of Darwin’s theory. Back to square one.

And of course you absolve the White House of having anything to do with this possible outcome. Bush’s hands are clean. You can look forward to your horse pulling his wagon all the way back to Crawford in January ’09 where you can rock with him on the porch while the accolades pour in — even a Nobel Peace Prize — for his having made the world a safer place.

Sam, your last paragraph……exactly what needs to be addressed……post withdrawal. There is, of course, the anti-Bush rhetoric out there in some corners……no more Bush, no more soldiers, no more violence.

I am inclined to believe rather that they engage in sectarian violence to a greater degree, overwhelm the ability of the Maliki government to cope and one day, the next Saddam finally wrests control again after this rendition of Darwin’s theory. Back to square one.

The only ones that are going to thrive in that environment are guys with guns, the militias and the fanatics that don’t have families to care for as their first priorities. These guys can be more reliable than foreign soldiers for keeping the peace in the neighborhood, but thats a relative statement. Move the clock forward 4 years.

Whoever eventually runs Iraq is going to be the ones who can survive the longest, we don’t have to tell them to wait us out, they already know that. I seriously doubt that group is going to be what Bush had in mind when he envisioned a “Free and democratic Iraq”.

Thank you for coming down from your high horse enough to allow me to voice my opinion, but I don’t know where you got “visceral hatred.”

I do not hate Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al for what they have done to my country. The punishment that history metes out to them will be far worse than one blogger’s puny voice. Hence the reference you cite to “historian’s Hell.”

I was not suggesting you derive “pleasure”, per se, from excoriating Bush (Cheney and Rumsfeld). But, you are deriving something otherwise it would not eventually surface in each thread.

Your article posts linked all begin with a objective tone. But, just below the surface, there is this………

Shaun Mullen Says:
March 28th, 2007 at 6:22 am There comes a point when the executive’s malfeasance — in this case the conduct of a Iraq war now in its fifth year with no end in sight and in LBJ’s case his unilateral declaration of war in Vietnam — must be addressed.
We have reached that point. Now. Today. Right now.

Shaun Mullen Says:
March 16th, 2007 at 11:29 am
stevesh:
I did not,see Ms. Hess, but thank you for the kind words. I really want this to work out even if I want the war’s architects to rot in historian’s Hell.

Shaun Mullen Says:
February 12th, 2007 at 6:30 am I am a Vietnam War veteran who saw first hand the folly of that conflict. As I state in plainspoken and unambiguous terms at the outset of my essay, I reluctantly supported the war even though I had George Bush’s number.

This is not to suggest you’re not entitled to voice your opinion. I’m not for continuing the Iraq endeavour either…….simply my disagreement doesn’t share shelf space with visceral hatred.

IMO, only 2 things happen in the next 18 months…..either Congress blinks over the “funding shutdown” or it doesn’t. Bush doesn’t matter, there’s no either/or in his playbook.

The LA Times editorial page,

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-bacevich9apr09,0,3650600.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

goes me one further, not only does Bush not matter, but in essence, Iraq, after the next 18 months, doesn’t “matter”…….as a matter of what the next President needs to focus on.

I guess I just need to come back when that dialogue replaces “Die Bush, die!”………..because, actually if he and Cheney did, what would be the next move then?

Here are links to a few of my more recent posts on where we should drag that dead horse:

Is That a Light At the End of the Tunnel?

Iraq & The Looming Constitutional Crisis

Are We Finally Approaching the Corner in Iraq?

Iraq: Four Years On & No End In Sight

Iraq Oil: The Devil Is In the Details

And this one as well:

Confessions of an Iraq War Blogger

I fail to understand how people like yourself think I’m getting my rocks off doing this. Feel free to pick up on all of the ideas I espouse, as well as those by the commenters.

At what point, Shaun, is the dead horse no longer worth kicking?

When news agencies stop reporting the president’s childish demands for bills he’s willing to sign as rhetorically sufficient.

I’d head over there and comment on that, but he has a habbit of banning commenters for throwing his past posts back in his face and then claiming it was for some slight he can no longer remember.

Shaun Mullen Says:

April 9th, 2007 at 7:21 am

Which is a direct result of the botched U.S. occupation………….and all roads lead back to the White House.

At what point, Shaun, is the dead horse no longer worth kicking?

There’s an interesting thought over at qando.net today as to whether the blog universe is losing its value as a medium of useful discourse and simply becoming either outposts of like-minded echoes or opportunities to deliver the “punches to the face” that you would likely not do (or be able to) face to face. In other words, is emotional catharsis more important than ideas picking up on where do we go from here?

They are clearly walking through the neighborhood in relative safety.

Is that John McCain I see waving an Iraqi flag?

The Iraqis do indeed to take responsibility. As a people they have not, nor has an abjectly corrupt, slavishly pro-Shiite central government propped up by the U.S.

But this is an effect of a cause, and all roads lead back to the White House.

“We wanted to (our idea), but they forced us out. Now look at the mess they’re in. If only they had stuck to (our approach)…”

..how fantastic any outcome is going to be for the Iraqis themselves is a little more in doubt, regardless of strategy.