Wow. Lots of long faces here at Winds.<\/p>\n
I’m not sure what to make of it. Actually I am, but I kinda don’t want to say it to my co-bloggers.<\/p>\n
No, there’s no magic play in the Bush plan we heard about tonight that will suddenly win the war. No, the mistakes we’ve made over the last three years can’t be unwound.<\/p>\n
Everyone is looking for a magic spell that will suddenly unlock all our troubles, or a secret hidden-ball play that will guarantee victory.<\/p>\n
Ain’t here. Ain’t happening at all.<\/i>There are a few points I’d like to make that we all seem to have forgotten.<\/p>\n
Iraq is a battle, not a war. If we won – as completely as anyone could imagine – we’d still face a conflict that poses capable, committed adversaries worldwide against us.<\/p>\n
It matters a lot that we win in Iraq – both in terms of the impact on the worldwide conflict and in terms of the lives of the Iraqis themselves. Bush is absolutely right – losing in Iraq unlocks a set of potential futures that we really, really won’t like. <\/p>\n
Those of us who support (and supported) the war are losing the public argument bigtime; we’re increasingly standing alone in a corner. Get used to it; we’re not an effective political force, and our political leadership (the President…) has pretty much blown things. OK, so what’s the plan? What do we do?<\/p>\n
Well, it’s like this. <\/p>\n
First, and foremost, I hope we’re all wrong. I hope, more than anything, that the national collapse of belief in the war doesn’t lead to a military collapse. I hope that a military collapse doesn’t lead to a wider war.<\/p>\n
As I say – I could well be wrong about this, and hope I am. I’d like to be.<\/p>\n
But what if I’m not?<\/p>\n
Well, there’s not a lot I can do about it as an individual citizen and blogger. There’s not a lot you can do as blog readers. We’re not even backbenchers right now. <\/p>\n
But we’re looking at this as though the daily news is what matters. It’s not.<\/p>\n
There is going to be a national debate over the next two years over what to do. We’d better learn how to participate in that debate. That will involve a lot of examination, a lot of discussion – including discussion with people who oppose us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wow. Lots of long faces here at Winds. I’m not sure what to make of it. Actually I am, but I kinda don’t want to say it to my co-bloggers. No, there’s no magic play in the Bush plan we heard about tonight that will suddenly win the war. No, the mistakes we’ve made over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}