War in Iraq Ends: Aug. 31, 2010

Obama said it, thereby making it true. It's an interesting strategy for war, one that I'm glad Hitler never realized, though it's too bad Roosevelt never did.

Now, hopefully I have to eat my words and, on August 30th of next year, all of the insurgents/terrorists/freedom fighters/Iranians or whatever you want to call them will be freaking out and trying to do as much damage to us because we have stated that we win the next day.

On a far more serious note, this just screams doom to me. On several occasions we have set deadlines for troop withdrawal or for some other pullback, and, without fail (as far as I remember), that date became a battle cry for our enemies.

By setting a specific date for us to essentially "win" (granted, a force over 50,000 will remain to support and train the Iraqi army) the war, we are, for the next year and a half, giving all of our enemies that are currently in Iraq an Alamo, except without losing any of their heroes. Obama gets to make himself look better to all the anti-war constituents, and all it costs is the lives of several thousand US soldiers and countless Iraqi soldiers.

I am glad to see that he's willing to reassess it as the time grows nearer -- again, from what I recall, that was something we would do with the public deadlines stated in the past, too. However, if history teaches us anything beyond the apparent fact that we don't learn from history, we can probably expect a surge in destabilizing elements in Iraq which will lower American (civilian) morale, Iraqi morale, and act as a catalyst for the insurgency that now will have a goal to strive for.

Essentially, we'll be right where we started, but with several more dead on both sides.

[edit on 2/27/09/27 by junglejake]