Hunter on Iraq: This is a situation that is impossible to win. (But he's not saying what you think.)

i've read hunter's posts for a couple of years now, and i respect his ability to articulate very complex perspectives in an intelligent and logical way... however, i find the following to be among the most despairing, defeatist things i have ever read from him or any other progressive writing on iraq, and i'm not sure i can put into words the depths or even the sense of those feelings... i've excerpted below what i found to be the parts of his post i have the most difficulty with... i'll offer them to you, and if you have any thoughts, i'd be happy to hear them... as for me, i'm going to let the whole thing simmer on the back burner for a while, let the emotional adrenaline work its way out of my system, eat a decent dinner, and maybe come back to this later...

Let me offer some grim predictions as to the outcome of American involvement in Iraq:

1) There are going to be American troops in Iraq for the next ten years, though the numbers will be substantially reduced.

2) There are going to be permanent American bases in Iraq, just as the neoconservatives had desired.

3) Iraq is going to continue to be in a period of instability for years, and become a true haven for terrorism and religious strife, and there is very little we can do about it.

[...]

America made this mess, and America bears responsibility for the bloody aftermath -- whatever that aftermath turns out to be. If leaving the current troop levels in place could truly prevent another 100,000 Iraqi deaths, then it would be our duty to do it. If Petraeus' plan had a reasonable chance of working, it would be our obligation to try. A miserable truth, yes, but a moral truth nonetheless.

[...]

I suspect the odds of a complete troop withdrawal from the country to be vanishingly small.

[...]

[A] Vietnam-style abandonment of the country seems extraordinarily unlikely. American forces may retreat to fortified bases in the country and leave most day to day operations to the Iraqis, but I find it hard to conceive that any president, Republican or Democrat, would abandon the already-built major bases in an extremely turbulent portion of the world threatening at constant collapse, unless circumstances crumbled so badly that even those positions became utterly untenable.

It would require a metaphorical abandonment of the country: impossible for this president, unlikely for others. It would require a physical abandonment of the country: equally unlikely. It would require a reshaping of Mideast policy such that those bases, located in the middle of a region of unstable nations, were considered less liability than strategic advantage: absurdly unlikely, regardless of whatever future American policy morphs into.

[...]

Short version: this is a situation that is impossible to win. Having Democrats in charge doesn't change that, and the answers on how to fail the least catastrophically are not easy. That is, after all, the definition of quagmire.

what he seems to be saying, if i am understanding him correctly, is that, owing to the disaster we have created, there cannot be other than a lose-lose outcome, and he is laying out what he believes to be the MOST likely and the LEAST disastrous of the possible scenarios... am i getting that right...? anyway, comments appreciated...

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