How does the U.S. bow out gracefully?
I have been giving that some thought lately. The “stay the course” and the “tinker with tactics” arguments don’t appear to grasp the reality of armed interests competing to fill the power vacuum created when Saddam was deposed. The “cut and run” argument may tempt those opposed to the seemingly endless expenditure of American resources but it flies in the face of a standard of responsibility shared by most of us…some call it the “you broke it, you pay for it” philosophy while others refer to the “we’re in it now so we have to finish it” dictum. They aren’t expressing the problem in exactly the same way but the endpoint is the same. One can choose between two distasteful options or one can hope that some third option reveals itself.
A coup in Iraq wouldn’t solve any of the significant regional issues that American policy is intended to address but it would seem politically expedient for America.
