A Darn Good Question

"Since his first fevered dreams of toppling Saddam and remaking the Middle East, President Bush has always tied the idea of finishing the job in Iraq to the exercise of hard power. It was a job more for Rummy than Colin or Condi. His only nod to questions of when our troops will come home: “As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” But a positive outcome in Iraq will not be the result of our military might, even if we stop-loss our troops for the next hundred years.

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As retired Gen. William Odom, former national security advisor to Reagan, has pointed out: the insurgents are fighting very effectively without US military training, so why aren’t the Iraqi security forces? "

Iraq: A Handy Rebuttal to the "We Have to Finish the Job" Conventional Wisdom