Reply #3: I hate to agree with this position, but I do

[Bucky]

Harold Ford is telling an unpleasant truth. I hate it, but it's true. We can't leave Iraq yet.

I loath this occupation of Iraq. I hate the way my recently graduated students are dishonestly recruited by the Army and Marines to go into that hellhole and fight an enemy they can't see among a population who wants them gone. As long as we are there, we will have to endure the steady drip drip drip of American deaths and, worse, the deaths-by-the-dozen that each new week's bundle of car bombings bring. But these same military experts who tell us that Rumsfeld screwed the pooch on every level of the planning of this war, also predict, with some personal insight, that if we simply packed and left Iraq on a few weeks' notice, the country would go up like a tinder box. They wouldn't be reporting Iraqi deaths by the dozens, but by the hundreds. There would be a couple of small genocides.

As horrible as it is, we have to stay in Iraq until plans can be laid, by a competant administrator, to extract our people without igniting the region. This is exactly why I opposed the war to begin with--there was never any exit plan, as the Powell Doctrine stipulates must exist before entering an armed conflict. The other part of the Powell Doctrine is also critical. We broke it; so we bought it. Bush lied when he told us what it would cost--the price is our international credibility and the blood of thousands of our troops. We can't fix it. The violence won't stop until long after the last American troop is gone--as must eventually happen. But we do need to patch it up as best we can until the rightful owners are in a position to take possession of their country.

A quick exit from Iraq seems to promise an almost happy ending to this story. But that promise is as big a lie as "we know they have weapons of mass destruction" or "it's not about the oil." The only mission accomplished is the needless deaths of thousands so far and the almost certain deaths of thousands more before it ends--and it must eventually. This is still a democracy, a collective political expression of the American will. The blood is not just on Bush's hands nor just on Rumsfeld's. We own this government. The blood is on the hands of all of us, including those of us who opposed the war. We own this government too. Even if we failed to control it, it's still ours. We will continue to pay until the Iraqi government can stand on its feet.

There won't be a happy ending. But the punishment for our country's hubris, for the error of too many of us buying Bush's lies, is not done with. Telling Iraq "I'm sorry" won't end it. Only time will end it, and time is going to move very slowly.