Will W 'Flip-Flop' on Iraqi Elections

[mburbank]

I'm not sure what we can do.

Postponement won't do anything, your right there, but the question is (and I don't know the answer) which will do more harm? Staus quo or endorsing an obviosly invalid election. I don't agree with the Administration that a 'flawed' election is better than no election at all.

It will be more than just flawed, it will be patently illegitimate, and that could make things worse than they already are. We coould see all Sunni's banding with the current insurgency, the Kurds splitting off, Turkey invading Northern Iraq to make war on the indpendent Kurds or Kurds fomenting rebellion in Turkey and the Shiites trying to solidify their election gains with backing from Iraq. Pretty much the same set of reasons Bush senior gave for not invading Iraq.

The same goes for power vaccuum in Iraq if we leave. That would be awful, but it's pretty damn bad and getting worse every day, and it's bleeding our economy dry and tieing down our military so we have no serious threat of sustained force for anything else in the world.

I think eventually declaring victory and leaving ala Vietnam is the only option we'll have, and it will be a very bad one but we'll have no choice. The question is how many dead folks and how much money before we do.

People of all stripes keep saying 'defeat is not an option!'. I disagree. The law of gravity going away is not an Option. Defeat is an eventuality and instead of pretending it can't happen, we ought to be looking for exit strategies.