Dump-Iraq Bill Passes out of House

With a display of the sort of leadership I have become resigned to, the U.S. House of Representatives ordered President Bush to start pulling troops out of Iraq by Oct. 1.

The bill passed, 218-208.

CBS News reports that this is "the first binding congressional challenge to Bush's handling of the conflict now in its fifth year.

"Our troops are mired in a civil war with no clear enemy and no clear strategy for success," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, said in the CBS article.

It seems that some of our nation's leaders have learned the lessons of history, although perhaps the wrong ones. "Quagmire," so popular a few months ago seems to have been shortened to "mire."

I suppose that Representative Hoyer should be applauded for striving to save young Americans, drafted into military service, from dying in the rice paddies of Iraq.

Wait a minute. This isn't the sixties. There isn't a draft: the U.S. has a volunteer army. and Iraq isn't Vietnam.

I believe that there is much to be learned from history. The problem is, what lesson is to be learned?

Vietnam really was in a civil war: divided north and south. Quite a few people in Iraq are getting killed, but whether it's a civil war, a bunch of gangs trying to muscle each other out in a sort of turf war, or something else, doesn't seem certain.

U.S. troops in Vietnam also suffered by being managed by people back in Washington. The inept micro-management techniques used by U.S. political leadership during the Vietnam era was so bad that it became a standard horrible example for trade magazine articles on business management.

Back to that bill passed by the house.

I think that President Bush will veto the bill, as he has said he will do.

I think that candidates in all parties will make a euphemistic version of "Surrender Now!" part of their campaign in the upcoming election.

What concerns me is that the next president of the United States of America may be pledged to abandon Iraq to terrorists, and to maintain a temporary-peace-at-all-cost policy.