Good Morning Vietnam ... oops I mean Iraq

Well here we go again. In a war of attrition with no clear goals, trying to force democracy down unwilling throats.

OK that might be a bit extreme, but where is it in the best interest of the US for us to force the Iraqis to have a constitution? The democratic process is supposed to be inclusive not dictatorial. If we pressure them to meet OUR timetable then we've created a puppet state without legitimacy in the Muslim world. Period. And solved nothing.

Instead, let the Iraqi government, duly elected in the face of threats of violence as they were, do their job and answer to their bosses. And our government needs to do the same.

While I haven't been writing much lately, I've been talking to a lot of people. While the President lost my confidence early in this process a lot of good people believed we truly have a leader who is doing the "right thing". They're changing their minds.

I fully and unconditionally support the efforts of our troops to control the situation in Iraq. They follow their orders, they walk into harms way every day and try to get the job done. But they aren't sure what the job is anymore. They have kids jeering them from the streets, bombs going off, people targeting them for random shootings. It sounds like Detroit.

Gray bearded thirty , forty and fifty something conservatives, ex military and current (in some cases) are universally condemning this war. There is no plan, there never was a plan.

There were hopes.

There were good wishes and nice thoughts.

But a plan? Plans are based in reality and this whole war was fantasy. I've often been warned about living out fantasies, (like when I thought I could breath under water like a fish after I had the measles) (I couldn't) as they often don't play out as expected. This hasn't .

One suggestion to help the situation and disentangle the United States from this morass is to clarify our goals. In our national mind we didn't invade and destabilize Iraq to make it a profit center for American companies. The rest of the world isn't so sure. Now that there is an Iraqi government I suggest we terminate Haliburton's contract (T for C in contracting parlance) and allow the Arab world to handle it's own contracting. The Saudi's might even be of some assistance since they hire people to do their work all the time.

Terminating Halliburton and any other American based contracting firm working in Iraq would go a long ways to supporting our contention that America didn't invade for gain. And getting the other Muslim countries economically involved in the conflict may well improve our chances of extricating ourselves successfully from Iraq.

This time maybe not from the embassy roof.