The failures are many

Here's a (to my ear) new argument for withdrawal. If we abandon our participation in the violence in Iraq, we would be able to put more U.S. forces in charge of reconstruction efforts and infrastructure maintenance than we can currently spare. That way we could at least try to secure a few vestiges of civil society for Iraqis who want to enjoy need them and perhaps that will provide some small downward pressure on those who are advancing the fighting. Or, we can continue apace with our multidimensionally failed strategy:

In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

Comments

[JimPortlandOR]

Here's a reason for not getting involved in wars in places we don't understand, that you probably haven't heard:

The American people (and their media) have no attention span for anything outside the US, so we have consistent reality checks on what is done in our name. Therefore we shouldn't do those things (war).

Oh, and by the way, we have no attention span for anything done inside the US either, so we should do only things that can be done in one week or maybe a few.