Catch-43

The same day that Democratic hawk Senator Joe “Imus Regular” Biden announced his view that the Iraq war cannot be won under Bush’s policies (including The SurgeTM), and that General Petraeus is misleading us with his optimism… the new Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, announced that the active duty military would see their tours of duty in Iraq extended from 12 to 15 months, making them the longest tours since the Second World War, and extending the ongoing tours of thousands of troops already there, and thousands more about to go, often for the second or third time. [It all makes sense when you think about it, since the purpose of the Iraq war is to fight “the terrorists(tm)” who we all know are far more dangerous than Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan combined (with the Soviet Union, the Confederacy and the Klingons and Romulans thrown in).]
I offer (c/o our old friend the Unseen Editor) this in the Huffington Post from Tish Durkin, more or less making a very interesting point about why she personally is still ambivalent about Iraq, and indeed, hoping against hope that The SurgeTM doesn’t prove to be just more of the same disappointment… especially in the hope that we can do something good for the Iraqi people, who after all, really did suffer horrendously under Saddam. Quite interesting, even if I readily admit that I, as a knee-jerk matter, believe that anything– anything at all– with Bush’s, Cheney’s and Rove’s fingerprints on it is per se doomed to failure, out of their peculiar combination of corruption and incompetence. Still good reading, regardless of where you come in on this.
And there you have it. The SurgeTM, like the rest of the Iraq war, will largely be on the backs of those unfortunate men and women who volunteered for military service, thinking that their commander in chief would use them judiciously in the interests of defending the vital interests of this nation, and not in some frivolous and ideological quest for some unattainable vision of a democratic, America and Israel loving Middle East that probably cannot and never will exist… (and that’s assuming pure motives to the Bushmen, rather than what I really think!) Well, them’s the breaks.
To paraphrase the late Joseph Heller… Catch-43… it’s the best catch there is!