As I watched the video of the last trucks crossing the Kuwait border, all I could see were the black hulls of the Greek ships sailing away, gray smoke still hanging in the ruined walls of Troy.

Not that Iraq is currently in ruins, but the Trojan war has been on my mind for the last decade, since George W. Bush, like Agamemnon before him, began gathering reluctant allies for a headstrong military adventure that brought grief to nearly everyone associated with it.

To appease the gods for sending a military force to make war on a society in a war in which non-combatants on only one side would be at risk, Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter, Iphigenia.  (His wife would later kill him for having done that.)  Mr. Bush made no such sacrifice, nor did he ask the majority of his countrymen to make any sacrifice on behalf of the soldiers he commanded.

Popular political psychology has it that one of Mr. Bush, fils authentic motivations for the Iraq invasion was revenge on an enemy of his father’s (or perhaps to show himself stronger than his father).  Both roles are reflected in the character of Neoptolemus, Achilles’s son, whom avenges his father’s death before the walls of Troy, by killing King Priam as the city is sacked.  This “revenge” is the punitive act of a bully, putting the sword into an old man who can no longer defend himself.

As Achilles dishonored Hector’s body, dragging it through the dust of the Dardanian Plain, so the residents of Falluja desecrated the bodies of four Blackwater contractors in 2004, so American troops desecrated the bodies of living and dead Iraqis for “trophy photos,” so – bizarrely – did our military of our nation desecrate the bodies of our own troops by disposing of them in landfills.

“Troy falls at last after ten years of futile, indecisive, noble, mean, tricky, bitter, jealous and only occasionally heroic battle,” writes Barbara Tuchman.  As for the Greeks’ Trojan Horse ploy, she said it exemplifies, “policy pursued contrary to self-interest – in the face or urgent warning and a feasible alternative.  Occurring in this earliest chronicle of Western man, it suggests that such pursuit is an old and inherent human habit.”

(So, wait, am I comparing the US to the Greeks or the Trojans?  Both, actually.  It would seek a foolish consistency to only learn from one side and somehow we have maniacally managed to repeat the worst mistakes of each.)

A more recent and equally depressing analog in the history of arms is the nine-plus years the Soviets spent trying to bring a friendly government to Afghanistan.  That invasion/war/occupation began on a Christmas Eve in 1979 and ended with the trucks and tanks rolling over the border for the cameras on a winter day in 1989.  Like us, the Soviets didn’t try to portray their withdrawal as a victory march, but like us; there was a feeling of relief that comes from setting down a heavy load.  For Islamic militants, the Soviet withdrawal was seen as a tiny force, blessed by Allah driving our a superpower.  How will they see the US withdrawal from Iraq?

I don’t know how things went for the Soviet soldiers, but Western literature says those who fought at Troy brought their war home with them in ways eerily familiar.  Odysseus famously wandered for a decade, as did Aeneas of Troy and his followers.  Neoptolemus was killed by Agamemnon’s son Orestes (who also killed his mother Clytemnestra, who killed Agamemnon).  Our troops return to a devastated economy years of post-traumatic stress disorder.

I suppose it’s appropriate the end of this long, foolish war comes at the end of a year, the end of the 9/11 decade.  Here’s to hoping we can all feel as though we are putting a burden down and prepare to take up new and better burdens in the year ahead.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

Last week, Republicans who hope to be president stood silently by as their constituents cheered for the notion of letting uninsured people die needless deaths.  None of them had the courage to tell the morons in the audience to STFU.

At last night’s Republican debate, similar morons – or perhaps the same morons (the two debates were held 85 miles apart) – booed an American solider serving in Iraq because he asked if the candidates would try to circumvent his ability to serve his country because he is gay.

Whether or not you agree with our country’s wars, this man and thousands like him puts his life on the line every day on our behalf and when he says he wants to keep serving, he is booed by the very people he’s serving and not one – NOT ONE – of these so-called “leaders” will say a word in his defense.

Afterward, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman called the boos “unfortunate,” providing yet another definition for “too little, too late.”

I am more ashamed of my country today than ever before and that’s going some.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

“I used that for a long time,” he told me. “I’d say, ‘It’s OK for me to hate black people, because a black guy killed my dad,’ but really, I was racist. I was racist before the guy killed my dad and I was racist after. The only difference was that I had an excuse.”

For some reason, that conversation – which is two decades old itself – has been rolling around in my head since I saw the news of Osama bin Laden’s death Monday morning. When I read the news, I felt relieved. I did not feel glad. I did not run out into the street and dance.

Is it good Osama is dead? It’s clearly good he will no longer kill and given it’s extremely unlikely he was ever going to have a change of heart, his death is also expedient.

In 2003, the US invaded Iraq because, we were told, Iraq was allied with Osama bin Laden and had weapons of mass destruction. Neither claim was true. Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have since died. When George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld die, will Iraqis be justified if they dance in the street?

Among the secondary reasons for invading Iraq was that “Saddam killed his own people.” Then we killed some of Saddam’s own people. They’re all just as dead as each other.

The Declaration of Independence says we’re all created equal, so are our deaths equal? I suppose it depends on who kills and who is killed, whether it’s an “us” or a “them.” My friend, in his racism, saw African Americans as “them,” people he feared and hated. Maybe the man who killed his father felt the same way about white people and perhaps he had excuses, too. The same friend said in Vietnam, anyone killed by an American had the word “Commie” attached. “Why’d you kill him?” “He was a Commie.” He said a pig was shot in a village one day. “That was a Commie pig,” was the explanation.

This week Libyans are killing each other. A year ago, many Americans would have celebrated the death of any Libyan, since they were all “them” then. Now some Libyans are “us” and we try to keep them alive.

The book of Samuel records that a song popular among the women of Israel long ago went, “Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.” The song made Saul, who was king, jealous of David, who was the exciting new military commander, the Navy SEAL of his day.

“Bin Laden has slain his thousands and Bush has slain his ten thousands.” The math holds up, probably better than it did for Saul and David. Is it unfair of me to write that? Is one man a terrorist and one a patriot? By whose definition?

Is killing ever good? Is it ever worth a celebration? I can’t say it is.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

So, let’s get back to that. What a stupid idea. Just because Gen. William Westmoreland Stanley McChrystal asks for 30,000 troops, doesn’t mean that Mr. Obama, as commander-in-chief, has to give them to him.

I’m not a general or politician, but even after the president’s speeches, I have unanswered questions:

- What are these troops supposed to do? If we’re going to run a classic counter-insurgency campaign, along the lines laid down by Gen. David Petraeus (Gen. McChrystal’s boss), we’ll need between 500,000-600,000 troops in Afghanistan, instead of the 100,000 we’ll have there at the height of the surge and we can’t plan on starting to pull them out in mid-2011.

- What’s with the whole “in and out” strategy anyhow? In the old neighborhood, we used to say, “Go big or stay home.” Mr. Obama does neither. If we start ramping up in January 2010 and ramping down in July 2011, what’s the point, other than to put on a political show to defend Mr. Obama from charges of being “soft on foreign policy”? Memo to the White House: you’re gonna get accused of that anyhow and waste lives, time and money in the process.

- What will all this cost? The first and foremost cost is to our fellow citizens who bear the burden of fighting needless wars. As Bob Herbert pointed out in Tuesday’s Times, it’s the same few soldiers and their families who have been asked to sacrifice more again and again and again for eight years.

- What will this cost in dollars? The cost of the war commonly bandied is one million dollars per year, per pair of boots on the ground. The Washington Post reported Monday that as we pull out of Iraq, the military is authorized to leave as much as $30 million worth of gear behind for the Iraqis at each post. We are leaving 280 posts in Iraq, so the total value of gear we leave behind may approach $8.4 billion. No worries that corrupt Iraqi officials will let any of that stuff fall into the wrong hands and American troops at the six large remaining bases will be killed with weapons purchased by US taxpayers. (“You there! Pay to kill your own kid!”) Of course, we’ll need the exact same gear in Afghanistan. Oh well, I guess we’ll have to buy all new stuff. Bet the defense contractors love this one.

- Are we really leaving Iraq? As I noted above, we’ll still have six large bases and Tuesday morning we woke to learn that over a hundred people died in a series of bombings in Baghdad. Could the terrorists be so uncooperative as to ratchet up the violence in Iraq, just as we’ve made a larger commitment in Afghanistan, thereby straining our overstressed forces even more? Could they be trying to pull us in two directions at once? Damn them! But how could anyone have foreseen this diabolical plot?

- What about the contractors? As of last March, there were 68,000 contractors in Afghanistan – outnumbering the troops at that time. There are 75,000 contractors in Iraq. Shifting the burden from soldiers to mercenaries might look good politically, but to whom are these people responsible? How many are taking drugs in opium-rich Afghanistan? (I’m sure it’s against the rules, but with the contracting companies making a big markup on every warm body they can locate, I’ll bet they’re pretty willing to overlook misbehavior.) Congress has been told we’ll hire local contractors in Afghanistan, but won’t that undermine our ostensible efforts to build up Afghan military and police forces?

- Where’s my war tax? If we accept, for the sake of argument, that Mr. Obama’s war plans need to be enacted, why is he following the George Bush strategy of lulling America into thinking that it all comes for free? Hamid “Where’s My Bribe?” Karzai told the BBC Afghanistan won’t be able to pay for any of its own security for 15 years. Why not ask the rest of us to share the sacrifice of the one in a hundred Americans who have to fight these wars? Why not at least tax the crap out of the bankers and Wall Streeters who party on with their ginormous bonuses?

And oh yeah…. What about Pakistan?

© Mark Floegel, 2009

Today’s New York Times has a story about Ted Kennedy’s posthumous memoir, in which he says President John Kennedy’s “antenna” was up over the misbegotten situation in Vietnam and that he was “on his way to finding that way out,” but was killed before he could do so.

Instead, Vietnam was handed to Lyndon Johnson, a consummate politician, who enacted some of America’s most compassionate social legislation – including Medicare. Republicans of the day scorned Medicare as “socialized medicine” that would lead to the government dictating all aspects of life to its citizens.

Sound familiar? Medicare did not lead to a Soviet-style government oligarchy and neither would the boldest of the health care reforms under consideration today.

Again we have a young Kennedyesque president who looks more Johnsonian with each passing day. No one really knows what went on in Mr. Johnson’s mind regarding Vietnam – he was an unreliable source – but the generals clamored for more and more troops and being a strident anti-Communist hawk would balance his liberal tendencies on civil rights and health care, so Mr. Johnson waded deeper and deeper into the southeast Asian mire.

So Barack Obama, who campaigned to prevent Iraq from becoming a quagmire, now sends more and more troops to prop up a corrupt puppet state in Afghanistan. Troops who have no clear mission beyond killing or capturing Osama bin Laden.

This week, besides Sen. Kennedy’s take on Vietnam, has seen conservative pundit George Will publish a column Tuesday titled “Time to Get Out of Afghanistan” (although he frenetically dances around, trying to avoid typing the “V” word).

At the other end of the political spectrum, Garry Trudeau has devoted this week’s arc of “Doonesbury” to describing the unwinnability of the Afghan war. (He, on the other hand, makes direct comparison to Vietnam.)

The same day the Washington Post published Mr. Will’s column, the Times ran a piece in which Afghan president Hamid Karzai is accused of stealing 23,900 votes in Kandahar in the recent national election. Mr. Karzai’s brother is leader of the Kandahar provincial council and is alleged to have stolen the ballot boxes and stuffed them with votes for his brother. The opposition says that even fig-leaf votes for the opposition were not allowed in the boxes. Sounds the kind of accusations leveled against the Diem brothers nearly 50 years ago. (The complaint from Kandahar is one of 2,615 about the Afghan election received by press time Tuesday.)

Following the scandalous June election in Iran, Mr. Obama was excoriated by the right for not speaking more loudly about the clear thwarting of the will of the Iranian electorate. If that was the case with Iran, with which the US has a frosty relationship, what words does he owe the Afghan people when his political client seems to have stolen an election? And will the American right (or left) demand that he speak them?

So what will it take? Mr. Obama is getting drubbed on his health care efforts, becoming ever more gun-shy and pliable in the face of Republican opposition that is as fact-free as it is vociferous.

As it was in Mr. Johnson’s time, the generals clamor for more troops. Mr. Obama has increased our forces in Afghanistan from 47,000 to 68,000. There will be calls for more; the body count will begin to grow. American cannot afford another president with big ears who forgets how to use them

© Mark Floegel, 2009

Still, the world is not two-dimensional and those who pretend it is do an injustice to reality. I’m willing to give Barack Obama some limited benefit of the doubt on America’s two wars because he inherited them from George W. Bush.

Now that he is president, Mr. Obama has the duty to direct US war policy in ways that are sane and in keeping with America’s constitutional values. As Richard Nixon said about Vietnam when he assumed the presidency, “This is Johnson’s war, but in six months, it will be mine.” It was, and he didn’t do a good job with it.

War is rarely noble. If any war approaches nobility, it was World War II and because of that, I think Americans have been confused about war since. Because we were clearly the “good guys” in that war, we tend to reflexively think of ourselves as “good guys” in all subsequent wars.

We have not been the good guys in Iraq. That war is a brutal, stupid mistake. Mr. Obama gets partial credit for promising to draw down our troops in Iraq and for promising to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. He’ll get full credit when he makes good on those promises.

Afghanistan is another story. I don’t think our cause there is noble, I do think it’s necessary.

We face a handful of unpalatable choices in Afghanistan. We don’t want the Taliban to take over and make the country a haven for terrorists nor do we want the country to descend into the warlordism and opium production that preceded the Taliban’s first takeover. The Karzai government we’ve supported is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent (very much like the disastrous Diem regime in South Vietnam).

What’s the solution? I don’t know. I do know Donald Rumsfeld’s massive bombing campaign that opened the Afghan war was stupid and brutal, like the Iraq mistake. Somehow, we have to find a way to make Afghanistan stable, governed by people who are a threat to neither Afghan citizens nor other countries. I know getting there from here will be a long process and will entail the goodwill of many nations, both in the region and around the world.

The Afghans have had poor to terrible governments as long as history can record. It is understandable, given their plight, that the Afghan people have little or no hope for a decent society (or would even know what one looks like), so we have to have that hope for them. If we are to have a policy – a war policy, a foreign policy – that is worthy of the United States of America, then we need to have as our goal the stability of Afghan nation and the well being of the Afghan people. We need to help them stand until they can stand on their own.

General David Petraeus was in Washington yesterday, asking for more troops. We will soon have 68,000 troops in Afghanistan and Gen. Petraeus would like another 10,000 on top of that. Many of these troops have been rotating on and off combat duty for seven and a half years. Stateside lives are in tatters; many suffer from post-traumatic stress. All of us owe these men and women a huge debt and we should not scant on paying it. They have sacrificed greatly and deserve our support.

President Obama seems intent on extracting us from a foolish and unnecessary war. The other war, the unwelcome but necessary war, he seems determined to fight as wars should be fought, with sadness and determination.

© Mark Floegel, 2009

There are a number of Republicans running around now, saying Mr. McCain never said that, but he did. He said it on several occasions and used numbers like a thousand or ten thousand years – always stipulating that it’s OK with him only if Americans are not being killed or wounded. It was caught on tape, you have YouTube, right?

For all the fuss that been made, no one seems to have asked Mr. McCain the obvious follow up questions to clarify his position.

Follow-up Number One: If you’re willing to keep American soldiers in Iraq for 100 years – provided none are being killed or wounded – how many years are you willing to keep them there if they are being killed and wounded?

Over four thousand troops have died in Iraq, tens of thousands more have been wounded. Generals are warning Congress that our troops are stretched to the breaking point, studies show that as soldiers are sent back for third and fourth tours of duty, they show alarming rates of post-traumatic stress syndrome. So, while Mr. McCain can say you’re willing to keep troops in Iraq if they’re not being killed or wounded, an Iraq without killing and wounding is not a place of this Earth, not now and not for the foreseeable future. We know you’re willing to stay in fantasyland Iraq for a century Mr. McCain. How long are you willing to keep our troops in the real Iraq?

Follow-up Number Two: If we are to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years, should we also expect to keep troops in Afghanistan for 100 years? Afghanistan and the border with Pakistan is the real front in the global war on terror, regardless of how much blood, treasure and effort you and your Bush administration friends pour into Iraq. Like Iraq, Afghanistan shows absolutely no signs of being able to function as a western-style democracy in our lifetimes. If we are to keep troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan for 100 years, then surely we will need a larger military. How much larger should it be? One hundred thousand troops? Two hundred thousand? Five Hundred thousand?

How do we get those troops to enlist? We have trouble recruiting and retaining soldiers now. Of course, with a bigger military, we wouldn’t be burning out troops at the rate we are now, but how are we to recruit extra hundreds of thousands of young people into the military if all they have to look forward to is decades of garrison duty in dusty, desert lands halfway around the world? You compare your imagined Iraq occupation to our bases in Korea, Japan and Germany, but real Iraq and Afghanistan do not compare to Korea, Japan or Germany. Not now and not anytime soon.

Follow-up Number Three: How do we pay for all this?

The Iraq occupation costs taxpayers $12 billion a month, Afghanistan a few billion more. If we somehow arrive at the fantasyland version of Iraq and Afghanistan where our troops are not being killed or wounded, those occupations might not be so expensive, but how fair is it to ask Americans – who, by the way, are three months into a recession that grows deeper by the day – to keep footing the bill for this?

One of the primary reasons the “surge” Mr. McCain praises has worked as well as it has is due to payments American forces make to former insurgents. Approximately 90,000 of these men, euphemistically “the sons of Iraq,” get $180 from the U.S. every month. That’s over $16 million a month right there. How long can we afford to purchase the loyalty of entire nations?

Follow-up Number Four: Then what?

Even if John McCain’s peaceful Iraq/Afghanistan fantasyland emerges from the mist, does he think America’s obligations end there? Take a glance down the African continent: Darfur – and Sudan generally, Somalia, Kenya, Congo, Zimbabwe – all trouble spots. Colombia and Ecuador have been threatening each other lately, Pakistan and Lebanon have surplus internal unrest, there are food riots in Haiti and the Israelis and Palestinians may have a war in Gaza. If leaders of rogue or unstable nations the world over know the U.S. is permanently tied down in two countries, that changes the balance of power all over the planet. How do we deal with that Mr. McCain?

Much has been made of John McCain’s temper and rash, off-the-cuff remarks. Worrisome as those are, I think we have as much if not more to fear from what he produces in his most sober moments.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

There were only nine of us Monday evening. The previous Wednesday, the war’s fifth anniversary, had drawn a crowd of 60 vigilers. Perhaps not enough time had passed between to two dates to bring folks back out. Fewer cars honked to acknowledge us. The teenaged driver of one minivan screamed, “I love waaaar!” as he drove by. At least he had his van packed with the friends he was showing off for, thus making efficient use of his gas, if not his mind.

As we stood on the curb, things were falling apart in Iraq again. Although Moqtada al-Sadr had not called off his cease-fire, it seems the Iraqi government decided to make a pre-emptive strike against his Madhi Army. Fighting is widespread in Basra and Baghdad. American generals haven’t complained about it, so the action seems to have their blessing. Americans have taught the Iraqis something about pre-emptive strikes.

At some point Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki gave the Sadrists 72 hours to lay down their arms. None of the news outlets is reporting specifically when the 72 hours began or will end, but the deadline will arrive sometime Saturday. It’s unlikely any fighters will accede to Mr. al-Maliki’s demand. Then he’ll get a real taste of what the Americans have experienced for five years. He’s given his ultimatum, he’ll be ignored, he’ll have to figure out how to save face or just get used to losing face, as we have.

On the curb Monday, I was running some numbers of my own. It was 539 days from the beginning of the war until 1,000 troops died. The second thousand died in 414 days and the third thousand in 479 days. This fourth thousand died in the span of 449 days, for an overall average of one thousand dead every 472.5 days.

At that rate, I won’t be back on the curb again until the war’s sixth anniversary next March and then again sometime in July of 2009, when we pass the 5,000-casualty figure. Will I have to stand on the curb next March or next July? I suppose it depends on what happens in November.

Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have promised to withdraw troops from Iraq. If one of them is elected, they will have been in office 60 days on the sixth anniversary of the war. If a President Obama or Clinton-ordered withdrawal is underway, it will certainly not be complete by the 20 March 2009, so I suppose I have an appointment with the vigil.

If John McCain is elected, I may have an annual date with that Pearl Street curbstone for years to come. Mr. McCain has said he doesn’t care if American troops are in Iraq for “a hundred years, a thousand years or ten thousand years, as long as Americans are not being killed.”

John McCain is lying. As Nicholas Kristof pointed out in Sunday’s New York Times, the Iraq occupation costs $5,000 per second. That’s $300,000 per minute, $18 million an hour, $432 million per day, $3 billion per week, $12 billion per month and $144 billion per year.

Although Mr. McCain takes pains to say, “as long as Americans aren’t being killed,” the point is Americans are being killed and he’s the guy calling for surges and pouring in more troops.

US News and World Report says American soldiers carry backpacks stuffed with cash through the streets of Baghdad, giving “microloans” of $2,500 each to shopkeepers, hoping to stimulate Iraq’s economy. Thugs, our enemies probably, find out when the cash is disbursed and pretty soon they’re holding the money and likely use it to buy weapons to kill more Americans. Blood and treasure.

The Washington Post says we pay former insurgents $180 each every month to be on our side. How long can we keep buying our way through Iraq, Mr. McCain?

America may throw another thousand young lives at Iraq and perhaps another thousand after that. The curb in front of the Unitarian Church, near the federal building, isn’t done with me yet. American troops will come home, not because too much blood has flowed, but because we’ve run out of money. It’s the American way.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

I’ve been thinking about the Tet Offensive because 1968 was an election year. The US was involved in a long foreign war and although there was no end in sight, the Pentagon and White House told Americans things were getting better.

Then Tet happened and the bottom dropped out. It was a military disaster for Communist forces in Vietnam; the Viet Cong was wiped out as an effective fighting force and the North Vietnamese Army was significantly weakened.

Tet was, however, a political victory. It convinced many in America that our military and political leaders were either out of touch with events in Vietnam or lying to us. It made clear to the public that the United States had no vital interest in “bringing democracy” to a small nation on the far side of the world, a nation that seemed hopelessly divided and one that had no interest in American-style democracy.

Forty years, on, Iraq is in kind of a “pre-Tet” mode. It was less violent in the last six months of 2007 than it was in the first six. That may be due in part to the surge of troops and new tactics from Gen. David Petraeus – and it may be in part to the unilateral cease-fire declared last autumn by Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shi’ite leader of the Madhi Army.

The Madhi Army, a private and powerful militia, was growing increasingly violent and self-controlled. Mr. al-Sadr is said to have called the cease-fire in part to reassert his own authority within the Madhi ranks.

Aside from whatever Mr. al-Sadr’s internal reasons, calling the cease-fire was smart politically. Pulling his troops off the streets – and the ensuing relative calm – demonstrated how much power Mr. al-Sadr has and sent a message to the Americans and the Iraqi government: It might be wiser to give me what I want rather than risk putting my guns back on the street.

Of course, what Mr. al-Sadr wants is for the Americans to go home. That leads to two option, both bad. On one hand, if the Americans continue their military presence (as is likely for at least the near future), then the Madhi Army may end its cease-fire in February or March, as predicted and Iraq in 2008 could look quite a bit like Vietnam in 1968.

Violence goes back up, US troop deaths spike back up, the home front funerals begin again in earnest, the military is further stretched, military families wonder if their loved one will ever come home, Iraq becomes more unstable and Americans again start asking – loudly – what good we’re doing in Iraq.

On the other hand, if the US presence disappeared, it’s likely the Madhi Army and other Shi’ite militias would exact their long-awaited revenge on Sunni Muslims across Iraq. Not a pretty sight.

What’s the answer? Phased withdrawal on a realistic timetable. Don’t leave precipitiously, but don’t make the kind of phony draw down promises George Bush makes and never keeps. At the same time, engage the UN to bring in a true peacekeeping force, allowing a transition to a full-fledged Iraqi government without a “reign of terror” period of sectarian killings.

Mr. Bush, Dick Cheney and their neocon cronies are looking for an excuse to inextricably enmesh the United States in Iraq – and its pool of oil – before their terms of office end in less than a year. Let’s not give it to them.

Moqtada al-Sadr is looking for an excuse to either restart Iraq’s urban war or eliminate his Sunni rivals. Let’s not give it to him, either.

We’ve in Iraq made so many of the same mistakes we made in Vietnam, but we haven’t made them all yet. Let’s try to avoid historical re-enactment.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

I won’t disagree with that wisdom, whether or not it proves to be truly wise. Bloggers on the progressive end of the spectrum are cheering for Mr. Romney, on the theory that the treacle-oozing former Massachusetts governor will be easier for the Democratic candidate to beat in November.

Mr. McCain, with his reputation (deserved or not) for straight talk, his entourage of adoring reporters and his ability to appeal to independent voters is thought to be a threat to the Democrats, especially if he matches up against Hillary Clinton. Her selling points – an experienced hand, ready to be commander-in-chief on day one – better describe Mr. McCain than Ms. Clinton.

But here’s the rub – Mr. McCain’s candidacy is only alive today because of the decrease in violence in Iraq in 2007. His campaign nosedived last spring when he – courageously – tied his political future to the success of the surge in US combat troops. When it looked like the surge worked, Mr. McCain’s candidacy came back from the dead.

Now the top issue on voters’ minds is the economy. From the looks of the recession we’ve entered, this will be the issue that will dominate the general election and John McCain, by his own admission, doesn’t know as much about economics as he does about military or foreign policy.

His most notable foray into domestic economics came early in his Senate career when he helped create the savings-and-loan debacle by getting federal regulators to back off their oversight of unethical McCain crony (and political contributor) Charles Keating. To his credit, Mr McCain admitted he’d been wrong and acted like an idiot, but idiocy is a poor qualification for the presidency.

So, if the economy is the number one issue, then perhaps Mr. McCain would be a better punching bag for the Democrats than Mr. Romney, whose background is in corporate management.

The only way to get the subject changed from economics to Mr. McCain’s strong military or foreign policy suits is for something to happen in Iraq. It’s entirely possible – even probable – that big things will happen in Iraq between now and November. What’s not probable – perhaps not even possible – is that a good big thing will happen in Iraq.

As the New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson reported last November Moqtada al-Sadr’s Madhi Army has been standing down since August and is supposedly going back into action in March, just about the time both American political parties will have settled on candidates.

If the economy remains sour – as is likely – and continues to dominate the electoral debate, that’s bad news for John McCain. If the subject shifts back to Iraq, it will likely be due to an unhappy turn of events – also bad news for John McCain.

Any way you look at it, it’s a tough year to be a Republican.