like Viet Nam

TBogg:

Like Viet Nam, we are losing in Iraq. That's a fact. You cannot beat an insurgency that seems to have an unlimited amount of "martyrs" willing to walk into the public square and blow themselves up taking twenty or so citizens with them. The American military is bunkered into the Green Zone behind blast-proof walls and razor wire because; if they walk out into the streets...they're going to die. It's Fort Apache the Bronx. Those who are supposed to be in control of the streets are the Iraqi policemen, but if they are in control, then why do they have to wear masks? Because, if they don't the insurgents will come to their houses and kill them. Iraq is probably the only country in the world whose entire police force is in the Witness Protection Program.

With every American death, with every request for more billions for Iraq, the American public that initially supported the war starts to edge away from it as if it smells like last weeks garbage. Military recruiters are currently doing everything short of shanghaiing high school kids and they still can't meet their recruitment goals. Soldiers are being kept in Iraq for too long. We are running out of money, soldiers, patience, and more importantly, the will to fight in Iraq.

Which is exactly what happened in Viet Nam.

There's a bit of a cross-blog discussion going on based in large part on Atrios' recent note that "Iraq is going to be continue to be a big problem for Democrats". The whole discussion bothers me, not least because I chafe at the notion that "the Iraq problem" is going to be foisted off on Democrats for a solution. In truth, of course, it probably will be -- the Bush deficit, the Bush bungling of world diplomacy, and the Bush war are going to each be with us long after Bush himself retires to the relative comfort of the hotter-than-hell Texas range.

I'd be happy to simply see the Bush administration figure out what to do about Iraq, but that's not going to happen. And it can't happen, because there is no "something" that can be done. The entire premise, of occupying a hostile nation and campaigning for their support by bombing the holy crap out of their neighborhoods and families, was and is a neoconservative fiction from the start.

If anything, the only thing surprising about the Iraq occupation is that it has so persistently mirrored what war critics predicted; a rapid military "win", followed by a Vietnam-like insurgency that bogs down U.S. forces and destabilizes any nascent attempts at self-government. That's not horn-tooting; anyone not fully under the spell of yay! war could see it coming ten miles off. But, as Yglesias hints, there isn't much ground there for war supporters and war skeptics to pair off and dance. War supporters desperately cling to the notion that there will be, might be, could be some avenue by which this international fiasco can at least be dulled, rather than admit their support was mistaken. War skeptics like, admittedly, myself, aren't in any mood to take patronizing, self-serving crap from people whose past judgment has ranged from horrible to catastrophic. And so, there's an impasse within the party, and indeed within American politics in general. We are, in a word, stuck.