Told You So

Nashville, Tenn. - Linking success in Iraq with the future safety of America, President Bush said Wednesday that withdrawing U.S. troops too quickly would lead to a terrorist state more dangerous than Afghanistan in the grip of the repressive Taliban regime.

Yeah, see, that's one of the things we were talking about when we said we shouldn't go into Iraq in the first place!

But our concerns that we might end up destabilizing things for years, providing a fertile ground for terrorist operations, and having to keep our military forces tied up for years were ridiculed. Saddam was compared to Hitler, and the "appeasers" trope was waved like a club, just as it was the other day. Those of us willing to use the Q word (quagmire) were shouted down. Donald Rumsfeld publicly doubted we'd be there as long as six months.

And so here we are. It's years later and now even the Cheerleader-in-Chief is arguing that our (increasingly fatigued) military is the only thing keeping Iraq from falling apart completely. Thousands of our soldiers have died. We're billions of dollars in the hole, and running an astronomical 'burn rate' that the President suggests won't end during his term in office. Now the Q word is a commonplace descriptor for the situation in Iraq.

That's what we were talking about. Big, expensive, messy, complicated situation that we'd be trapped in for years. Quagmire. No WMD, and Iraq, which was not actually a big threat to American security, now is.

You'd think the President would be embarassed that the situation he's created in Iraq is as he describes it. You'd think the guys so fixated on 'spreading democracy' throughout the region might now be more willing to listen to those who have demonstrated a better record of understanding the region and predicting the outcomes. Better men might be able to acknowledge that the people they dismissed were, in fact, right.

But no. In the eyes of the administration, we're still appeasers.