Joseph L. Galloway, McClatchy Newspapers, July 26, 2007
We’re hard upon the dog days of August. Members of the U.S. Congress and the Iraqi parliament will soon slither away to the shade of cooler rocks, and President Bush will no doubt head off to Crawford to take his frustrations out on some brush with a chainsaw.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, the 60,000 American combat troops who daily patrol the most dangerous streets and roads in the world will carry on fighting, dying and bleeding in the broiling sun where temperatures nudge the 130-degree mark and 40 pounds of body armor and Kevlar helmet plus weapon and ammunition weigh more with every step an Infantryman takes.
The politicians in Washington and Baghdad will take their summer breaks, happy to postpone any further thought of Iraq at least until September, when the U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus makes his progress report on the American troop surge to Congress, as though that may make some difference in how much longer this agony is going to continue.
Has anyone noticed that virtually every one of the players, political and military, have already begun chipping away at the September milestone? That, shock and horror, they begin to talk of the urgent need for American troops to remain in Iraq at the present level of 160,000 or maybe even more until 2009?
The Democrats in Congress — most of whom seem to be running for president — seem content to await further developments. The Republicans, especially those up for re-election in 2008, are wearing out the knees of their $4,000 suits praying for some miracle to remove Iraq and assorted other administration disasters from the voters’ minds. The President has gone back to talking about his impossible dream of “victory” in a war that can’t be won with the tools he’s applying in the place where he’s applying them.
The Iraqis bide their time and dream, as ever, sweet dreams of bloody revenge and communal slaughter and laugh at the to-do list of impossible American benchmarks. We talk of Iraqi “national” goals while the Iraqis talk of old, dark tribal and sectarian goals and we pass in the night like so many camel caravans.