'Loss' in Iraq and the Arkin Plan

Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry M. Reid's plan is no way to end the war.

"...Reid decries the current course in Iraq and the prospect of "endless war" under the Bush plan while offering a long list of military adventures and confrontations -- "the challenges we face" -- that he prefers to Iraq: increasing the U.S. force size in Afghanistan, defeating al Qaeda (somewhere else), confronting Iran, intervening in Darfur, addressing Venezuela and even Russia.

Somehow, Reid says, his plan "prevents the jihadists from being able to claim victory over America, and begins to restore America's prestige, power and influence in the region."

He defines a responsible end as one that "protects our strategic interests, strengthens our security, and brings our troops home."

To bolster his position, Reid refers to various "facts on the ground."

"There is no evidence that the escalation is working," Reid says.

But what if there was? Is Reid saying that he could be convinced otherwise? Is he playing a game with his rhetoric?

At the risk of provoking the true Bush haters out there, there isn't a doubt in my mind that everyone, Dick Cheney included wants to bring the Iraq war to what Reid calls a "responsible" end.

Reid's plan sounds to me an awful like the Bush plan. The differences are the embrace of loss and the timetable for withdrawal. The foreign policy blather of some alternative world after removal of combat troops is merely window-dressing for the agenda of withdrawal. And the compromises conceding an ongoing American counter-terrorism and training mission in Iraq could justify pretty much all of what we WERE doing in Iraq before.

In the end, the Reid plan makes no sense as an intellectual articulation of U.S. withdrawal...."