:-)

There's been a huge amount of waste and bungling. But worse than that, we're not doing what it takes to achieve our stated goals.

There was a tremendous amount of waste and bungling in WWII, but we changed tactics and replaced commanders when they weren't doing the job. We spent what it took. We raised the Army, Navy and Air Force that it took. The Pentagon and the Bush Administration doesn't seem willing to do that in Iraq.

Iraq's a mess and it became a mess as a result of our actions or inaction. We have the means to fix it (for some values of "fix it") if we're willing to pay the price (e.g. possibly occupying the place for decades). Whether we should pay the price can be debated, but if we could defeat Italy, Japan and Germany in less than 4 years, we could "win" in Iraq in that time, too.

Personally, I'm torn by what's going on there. As each day passes, it reminds me more of Vietnam. In both cases, apparently, gurilla attacks changed into a civil war. While it's true that democracy cannot be forced on people, it's hard to say that Iraq had a fighting chance to develop a democratic state on its own with the way we handled the occupation. We have an obligation, I think, to try our best to make it right and not just say - "We're starting to leave in 6 months, you better get your act together." It seems to me, we need more police-type forces there, to stop things like the attacks on infrastructure. But we also need much more rapid progess on things like jobs to get the gangs of hoodlums off the streets and working instead of kidnapping and murdering others. That will help improve the lots of the masses of people and make them less willing to support the violent elements. If, at that point, they freely choose a repressive government, well, them's the breaks.

And no end in sight. Bush leaves office in about 25 months. As a people we need to get ready to spend 8 billion per month (the current rate) until he leaves.

Yup. :-(

McCain seems to see the need to try harder, he and Biden being some of the few that have argued for [link|http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/6/30/94916.shtml|increasing troop levels in Iraq] (a topic that's been [link|http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec06/iraq_11-20.html|debated] quite a bit). It seems as though nobody with the power to make a significant change is willing to do so.

Cheers,
Scott.