I am quickly tiring of the shallow charade that has become the substitute for true debate and planning in Iraq and the War on Terror in general. Last nights Senate sleepover was perhaps the pinnacle of political posturing and a pitiful excuse for true debate and discussion when it comes to the Iraq War and the future of the Iraqi nation and the region.

Senate Dems Push All-Night Debate on Iraq Policy

“Our enemies aren’t threatened by talk-a-thons, and our troops deserve better than publicity stunts,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader...
…The legislation would require a troop withdrawal to begin within 120 days, to be completed by April 2008. The measure envisions leaving an undetermined number of troops behind, their mission limited to counterterrorism against Al Qaeda and other groups, protecting U.S. assets and training Iraqi troops.
There are currently an estimated 158,000 U.S. personnel in Iraq, and supporters of the legislation have repeatedly declined to estimate how large a residual force they envision. “We’re not going to get into numbers, because it changes the subject,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

I’m sorry, WHAT? Isn’t the whole point about what the future holds for Iraq, the US presence and roll there, and the amount of US troops that will remain? Yep, let’s not talk about that, and oh by the way, let’s try to embarrass Bush and the GOP some more. If they started talking specifics then maybe we would start to get somewhere. Are we talking leaving 100,000 troops there? 50,000? Eleven?

That would be an extremely important point don’t you think? The Democrats were far more interested in political theater than actually addressing the Iraq war and the future of the Iraqi nation and people.

Ben Shapiro has an excellent piece as well over at Townhall.com.

Democrats’ Iraq Policy: The Ultimate Hypocrisy

This week, Democrats broke out the cots and the S’mores, and held a big ol’ Senate sleepover for surrender. By pushing an all-night Senate session purportedly designed to debate the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, Democrats hoped to show their sincerity and moral indignation. “How many sleepless nights have our soldiers and their families had?” asked oily Senator Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, who only two years ago compared U.S. soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings.”
If politics is the art of painting a sincere face on blatant political manipulation, today’s Democrats are masters of the craft. Democrats have hedged their bets on the Iraq war since its inception. They have voted for it before voting against it, funded it before denying funding, supported it before undermining it.

So following last nights display of jr. high play acting I decided to set down some more thoughts on the ever so fun state of Iraq:

-George Bush gets all the blame but there is plenty of blame for everyone. It is just as much Reids war, and Hillary’s war, and Edwards war, and Kerry’s war. They voted for it, spoke out in favor of it, funded it, and now act like they had nothing to do with it. It’s one thing to say that the war has been prosecuted incorrectly. It’s quite another to say the aims of the war itself was incorrect. I am sick of the born again peacenicks that suddenly seemed to appear on the far Left waving white flags.

-Saddam was a thug, a tyrant, a destabilizer, a friend of terrorists and nutjobs the world over, a threat to the region, a warmonger, as well as a torturer and slayer of innocent men, women and children by untold tens and hundreds of thousands. Regime change had been the policy of the United States since the first Gulf War. To cry a single crocodile tear for the good ‘ol days of Saddam is stupid and ridiculous.

-The Iraqi’s have shown they did not have the political or cultural maturity to embrace the opportunity of freedom that we bestowed upon them. They could not get past the racial and religious differences between them and failed to see past the Zarqawi plan (which was brutal but brilliant and ultimately successful in the long run) which was by massacre and mayhem and atrocity to fragment the Iraqi population into violent and hostile armed factions leading to civil war.

-The Iraqi’s allowed themselves to be manipulated by the tactics of the Islamic Jihadists, al-Qaeda and its allies while the US fought a Republican war with a Democratic army that gambled on a quick and easy victory over Saddam’s forces (that was successful) that would be followed by a rebuilding effort and political transformation such as we had seen in Germany and Japan after WWII (that was unsuccessful). Instead, al-Qaeda decided to make its stand in Iraq instead of Afghanistan, the Iranians became far more involved militarily in Iraq than we figured they would dare, the over stretched military was not ready for a war of insurgency and once engaged fought it with one hand tied behind behind its back.

-The attempts at transforming Iraqi political culture were unsuccessful and far too utopian in scope. Instead of just removing the Saddam clan and their most hardcore supporters from power and replacing them with more friendly types, the US embarked on a complete dismantling of the military and (with the concept of de-Baathification) essentially the entire bueracratic, educational and political structure of the country. Rebuilding Iraq in ‘our own image’ if you will. And obviously that is THE mistake of the war.

-If the Democrats spent one tenth of the time and energy denouncing al-Qaeda and their allies for their bloodthirsty and spectacular massacres of ordinary Iraqis and pointing their fingers of guilt and blame at those who are truly at fault for causing the instability in Iraq as they do the ‘boogeyman’ Bush, then we as a country would be far better off than we are now. I consider the level of political debate on this subject to be on a grade school level at best. One would think that the elected representatives of the Republic would draw on the vast history of statesmanship and leadership of this country’s history to show some alternate visions for the future and paths to peace and stability in the region.

Instead I get bumper sticker slogans, evasions and flipflopping, absolutely no true plans for the future, cheap political theater, politicizing of the war, blatant manipulation of the situation for partisan purposes and revisionist history. All while those who pander to the most extreme of the radical pacifists and anti-American parasites who exist on the Left do little more than embolden our enemies, prepare to abandon our allies, and turn over an entire country to our vicious and brutal enemies. To those who see Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban as little more than poorly understood followers of the religion of peace, perhaps that idea is not so repugnant. To those of us who understand the mettle, aims, and goals of our enemies it is not an option.