The New Road

Iraq Tipping Point

We have finally, far too late, reached a tipping point on the Iraq war on capitol hill. Republicans are starting to defect en masse. Bush is apparently already warming up new talking points that would cover an eventual withdrawal. My hope is that it will slide further and faster soon and we will be looking at mass redeployments of troops, to genuine terrorist hot spots (hopefully) in the next six months. Honestly I don't think the armed forces can move much faster than that. And we will definitely have a long term presence in the green zone and the embassy for years to come.

On the political score this is really bad news for Bush. His approval rating is already at historic lows, and we haven't even officially lost and withdrawn yet. When that happens. When we get images of convoys of US troops driving out of Baghdad and the chaos that ensues after that, his numbers are going to go through the floor and there will be genuine calls for impeachment (even with so little of his term left to serve.)

Bush's plan of handing this catastrophe off to the next president and somehow securing his legacy (at the cost of thousands of soldiers and Iraqi lives) is collapsing. This should have happened much sooner. What little hope we had of building a stable nation of Iraq was completely squandered with years of 'stay the course' stupidity. What a waste.

Even I will admit to being scared about what comes next both for Iraq and America. I never wanted us to lose this thing. Which is why I didn't want us to go in there in the first place. But now that it's really coming to pass, it's very distressing. This whole disastrous misadventure has been such a nightmare from the beginning. This is far worse than Viet Nam. We will be feeling the repercussions of Iraq and Bush's failed presidency for generations.