As always, FRONTLINE is the premier current events program on television. It's amazing how you can live through these events and not understand what has happened until someone places it in context. And PBS is the only network objective enough to host a show like FRONTLINE. By contrast, CNN has been a dismal failure in covering the war.
What amazed me as I watched was the consistent view among the military advisers in the show that this is still mainly our problem, and that if we leave and chaos and suffering ensues, it will be mainly our fault. We have such a sky-high-minded view of ourselves - we think the rest of the world will blame us if we leave.
In reality, the rest of the world is criticizing us for staying - and the future is up to the Iraqis themselves. We cannot stop people who do not want peace from engaging in violence within their own country. We need to return to a more realist view of foreign policy, hyperpower or not. The standard for justifying foreign intervention is attack by one state on another. As George F. Will has said, "There is no duty to do what cannot be done."
I am afraid that in her heart of hearts (albeit made of ice, perhaps), Hillary Clinton agrees with those who say this is our problem and we have to stay. She is triangulating her rhetoric to win the nomination, but afterwards she will swing back to what she thinks is the center on this issue (the most important of the presidency) and commit to maintaining our force levels where they are. Therefore, she must not get the nomination.
Senator Kerry calls this a "tragic milestone," and the most catastrophic of the administration's mistakes made so far. Regardless of his mistakenly voting for the war at the time, he's right. For him to turn against the Iraq war is a flip-flop I would be happy with. Hopefully he has an exit strategy, even though he's not telling us about it at the moment.
This is why Bush must be defeated in November. I realize the economy is an important issue, but compared to 1000++ dead soldiers? Come on. Not to mention 7,000++ wounded, and the 11,000++ estimated by the Iraq Body Count . This is a slam dunk, as George Tenet would say.
Prediction: if Bush is [re]elected, the U.S. will engage in pre-emptive war against Iran and/or North Korea. Is that really what we want?
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