Burnt Orange Report

Hindsight's always 20/20

By Nathan Nance

Guest Contributor Nathan Nance

I doubt many of you are regular readers of my blog, so you have no idea how I feel about the war in Iraq or the war on terror in gerneral. You have no idea if I'm a liberal or if I'm off the scale socialist or conservative.

I think, in maybe getting to know me, we should talk about the war in Iraq, since it is the most pressing issue on our agenda. But, I'm going to do something a little different. Instead of telling you in my own words, how I feel, I'm going to let someone who was praised just this morning by Bush himself for his leadership in the war on terror, tell you. President Musharaf of Pakistan:

"I think it's less safe," Gen. Pervez Musharraf said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." Asked whether he considered the invasion a mistake, the Pakistani leader said, "With hindsight, yes. We have landed ourselves in more trouble, yes."

...

However, Musharraf said he does not believe U.S. and coalition troops should pull out immediately. Only after elections are held and the situation stabilized should the United States consider a withdrawal from Iraq, he said.

"[An early withdrawal] would create more problems in the region," he said. "Now that we are there, we need to stabilize the situation."

Now, I have my bones to pick with Pakistan and the fact that he is a military dictator plays very much against him in my estimation. But he's right.

As an aside, Musharaf also admitted in this morning's Washington Post that they have no idea where Osama bin Laden is, they just know he is alive.

No matter how you felt before the invasion, I can't see how you can agree that this was a good idea now. The closest to sane rationale I've heard from my Republican friends so far is "We were going to fight him eventually anyway." I'm not sure why war was inevitable with him, especially with the sanctions working. So I can't see this as anything more than a mistake.

But I also don't see how one can just pull up stakes and leave. If all of a sudden there were no troops to keep what little order there is in place, that country would be worse than Beirut in less than a day. But as long as we are there, there will still be an insurgency killing U.S. troops and still focused hatred on us in the Muslim world.

That is the very definiton of a quagmire. It's like quicksand. Once you step in, you're stuck. No matter what you do, you're still going to sink. Bush walked us straight into this quicksand, and even if John Kerry had been elected, we would still be stuck. That is the scary, painful truth of it. Wiser men than I don't know how to get us out, and that's probably because there is no way out. The really scary, scary thing I find, is that if the oppurtunity did arise to leave without consequence, I don't think Bush would take it.

Nate Nance is a 21 year-old sports/news clerk (glorified intern) at the Waco Tribune-Herald newspaper. He is also writer/editor of Common Sense a Texas-based Democratic Web log.