No End In Sight

The New York Times uses that expression to end an editorial about Iraq. Yes, there is no end in sight, alright. But not exactly what the NYT wrote.

Pretending things are better than they are will not make them so. America has some very hard strategic choices pressing down on it in Iraq — much more complicated than whether to set an arbitrary target date for troop withdrawal.

Should Washington continue to tolerate the operations of Shiite militias and death squads or should it use American military power to loosen their hold? Should the United States resign itself to slow-motion "ethnic cleansing" in some mixed areas or try to stop it by pouring more American troops into zones around Baghdad and Basra where the threat seems most acute? Is it more urgent to convince Iraq's Arab neighbors that they share a stake in Iraqi stability or to scare them off by proclaiming that America's larger goal in Iraq is to ratchet up the pressure for democratic change in a neighborhood almost universally ruled by authoritarians?

A Congressional leadership doing its job would hold hearings on these critical issues instead of setting partisan bear traps for November's election.

One could argue rather effectively that pretending things as worse than they are will also not make them so. Unlike the pontificators at the NY, I have a son serving in Iraq right now. He told me today, when he called to wish me a happy Father's day, that right now things are pretty hot for him, but that the troops think it will slow down as the terrorists run out of manpower.

In other words, there is no end in sight, alright. No end to the defeatism at the Times.