War Is Over

Harry Reid, who voted for the war, has really impressed with his evolution and his willingness to say what needs to be said. For the Majority Leader of the United States Senate to say something like this is very unusual.

The war in Iraq "is lost" and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, said Thursday.

"I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," Reid told journalists.

Reid said he had delivered the same message to US President George W. Bush on Wednesday, when the US president met with senior lawmakers to discuss how to end a standoff over an emergency war funding bill.

"I know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear ... I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically."

That must have been a cheery meeting. In fact, it was even colder than that:

"Reid talked about a recent conversation he had with a retired general where they talked about the similarities between the current situation and Vietnam," the source relates. "He talked about how the President and Secretary of Defense [during Vietnam] knew that the war was lost but continued to press on at the cost of thousands of additional lives lost."

"The analogy to Vietnam appeared to touch a nerve with the President. He appeared a little sensitive to it," the source continued. "And he clearly didn't like to hear people in the room say that the war couldn't be won militarily."

More: "Reid made it clear to the President that he understood that the President and Vice President after the veto would come after him and Speaker Pelosi with everything they have. Reid said that he and Pelosi would respond just as aggressively. He said he was convinced that they were on the right side of the issue."

It's about time that somebody said that the war, in military terms, is lost, though of course it hasn't been a war for 4 years or so but an occupation. The "war," if you can call it that, was won; the peace was lost almost from the beginning, and continues that way to this day. It's gotten progressively worse with each botched idea to find the pony.

The right will no doubt call Reid a defeat-o-crat, but he's actually a realist. You cannot police a civil war any more than you can win an occupation. I really think that Reid has determined that there's absolutely no downside to fighting aggressively to end our occupation of Iraq. There's only one quibble I have; I hope that his calls for withdrawal include contractors, which are almost as plentiful as troops over there, yet never get included in the death statistics (I believe that about 700 mercenaries have died).

The more that the President talks about this issue, the bigger a hole he digs for himself. But more important, each passing day brings such carnage and horror upon our soldiers and the people of Iraq that, on moral grounds, there's no sense in supporting the same failed strategy. The war is lost, and it's not a defeat to say that. It's a defeat to military families to stubbornly deny the truth that's staring you in the face and keep their sons and daughters in danger for nothing.

UPDATE: By the way, the President was completely lying when he said that delaying the supplemental would cause the Pentagon to run out of money. The Pentagon admitted today that they would be fine until the end of June. Last year's emergency supplemental wasn't finished until June 15, so this comes as no surprise, but history gets swallowed up by the constant news churn and nobody in the media bothers to check back, so the prevaricators get away with it.