Wouldn't you know it, Bush out-grinched the Grinch

by David Grand
December 22, 2006

Here I'd gone out and bought a big Xmas stocking in anticipation of Bush landing his sleigh on my roof (with a red nosed Cheney as the lead reindeer), and placing a large lump of coal in it as his way of telling me that he and his band of elves had decided, in their infinite wisdom, to continue basically on the same perilous course in Iraq.

The only possible major change I could foresee him making would be to buy-in to Senator McCain's harebrain proposal for sending 15 to 30 thousand more troops into that hellhole, despite the lack of support for it among generals on the ground in Iraq.

I can only assume that his kindhearted wife convinced him to wait until January to announce what he refers to as his new strategy for winning the war, so as not to dampen the holiday season for the American public.

After wracking my feeble brain for countless hours, I came up with what I consider the best solution for freeing us from that no-win war, other than hightailing it out of there as we did in Vietnam.

And, in the process, I discounted Bush's oft-repeated goal of turning over the security of Iraq to Iraqis as speedily as possible as so much wishful thinking.

For to me, that has about as much chance of success as did Nixon's much-touted policy of "Vietinamization"--turning the war over to the Vietnamese.

When LBJ was asked what he thought about it, he replied: "It was useless, that the South Vietnamese military was incompetent; and that if Nixon persisted in this approach, we would lose Vietnam," adding sardonically,"could he really believe all that?"

Now, the course of action I'd recommend be taken is to follow the example set in my war, the Korean War, which lasted three years and resulted in the loss of 39, 914 American lives, before ending on the same 38th parallel where it began.

By 1952, Truman realized that the victory he had hoped for there was no longer possible; and though U.S. forces were not losing the war, they were not winning, either. Instead, they were caught up in a bloody, expensive holding operation. (Sound familiar?)

Two thirds of American disapproved of the war, with leaders of both political parties asking how they could justify losing so many lives with no clear win strategy in sight. (Rings a bell, too, doesn't it?)

Eisenhower, Truman's successor, ended new military operations, and in July, 1953 the parties to the war signed a peace treat, except for the South Koreans, who believed it was a sellout on our part. Hmm, that sounds a lot like what the critics of the Iraq Study Group's report are saying.

For most Americans, the Korean War was not a defeat, for it proved that America had the will to stand up against Communism as well as foiling the Republic of China's plans to take over Taiwan.

As a recent article in Newsweek put it: "Something like the close of the Korean War is, frankly, the best we can hope for in Iraq; but in order for that to happen, we have to see Iraq as it is now, not as it once was, not as it could have been, nor as we hope it will become--there will be ample time to assign blame and debate the what if's."