Iraq Forever

Well, it appears that GWB's distancing himself... from himself, was short-lived. At his press conference he, rather incoherently, told us all that America would be in Iraq forever i.e. until the job is done (whatever that means). So, the flip-flop from "stay the course" 24/7 for three years became "we were never stay the course" and has now (at least temporarily) become "Stay the Course on Goals, Cut and Run on Methods". I can't make sense of it and, quite frankly, I don't think that there is sense to be made. I still think that it's stay the course soley to save face for GWB. Glenn Greenwald is equally sure that America is in Iraq forever and that GWB doesn't make any sense:

The President's Press Conference, devoted almost exclusively to Iraq, just concluded, and the internal contradictions and incoherent claims are literally too numerous to chronicle. But there really are only a few points worth making:

First, the President repeatedly defined "losing" as "leaving before the job is done" -- "the job" being the creation of a stable, unified Iraqi government that can defend itself. And we're not leaving before the job is done, which means that we are staying forever -- or at least as far as the eye can see into the future (or until the President leaves office).

[...]

Second, the President's remarks illustrated more vividly than ever before the towering incoherence at the heart of this whole project. According to the President, the reason that it is so important that we "win" -- meaning creating a stable Iraqi government -- is because American security depends upon the creation of an Iraq that is a "partner of the U.S. in the war on terror." But there is a complete disconnect -- and there always has been -- between stabilizing the Iraqi government and having a "partner of the U.S. in the war on terror."

The only "partner" this Iraqi government is going to have in the "war on terror" is Iran, not the U.S. (especially if we ever actually left), and the fact that it relies for its very survival on the lawless Shiite militias and death squads which are supposedly the Enemy -- and that they expressly refuse to disband them (because they can't and don't want to) -- reveals just how absurd is the idea that our security will be enhanced by entrenching this Iran-loving, Shiite fundamentalist, death-squad-deploying government. And why would the Iraqi government risk everything it would need to risk in order to expel Al Qaeda from operating within its borders? Isn't far more likely that, especially given its other vulnerabilities, they would reach some sort of accord of co-existence?

Put another way, even if stabilizing this Government were something other than a sad and transparent pipe dream -- even if we could achieve that goal by spending hundreds of billions of dollars more and squandering thousands and thousands of more lives -- we will have nothing to show for it other than having replaced a regime that hated Iran and Al Qaeda with a regime that is Iran's strongest ally and quite possibly tolerant of Al Qaeda (or worse).

That's the most tragic part of what we have done -- we can't possibly achieve the goals we ostensibly have. And if we ever did manage to do so, the situation we will have created will likely be worse than it was before the invasion. That might be the very definition of a strategic disaster -- starting a discretionary war in which you can't possibly achieve your goals and, even if you did achieve them (i.e., best case scenario), you create a situation making matters worse for yourselves (while generating unprecedented resentment in most of the world).