WIN, LOSE, OR DRAWDOWN

"...The Army has sent our veteran Stryker brigade -- on the cusp of a long-deserved homecoming -- instead back to Iraq to begin the equivalent of a third consecutive Marine tour of duty. The security of Baghdad is the official reason, but if you read between the lines, it is actually to generate positive headlines for the upcoming midterm Congressional elections. The administration is living under the fantasy that the Iraqi capital can be secured with photo-op half-measures that will somehow miraculously translate into positive media coverage of the results. On both counts, they could not possibly be more wrong.

The situation in Baghdad is bleak not because of a hopeless military solution, but due to a feckless political one. Prime Minister al-Maliki has truly found himself caught between Iraq and a hard place. He needs the support of the Shiite coalitions to which he belongs, yet is being made irrelevant by their encroachment on his government’s rightful monopoly on force. The Mahdi Army is literally just that: an army all its own. Much like the IRA, they have a political as well as a militant wing, and they wield both to considerable effect..."
American Citizen Soldier

OK, I can go home now, I can go to bed. It's done, I'm finished...I might as well, Buck Sargent has just managed in a few words what I could not do with years on this blog.

Thanks Buck, I owe you one.