All We Are Saying is 'Don't Give Peace a Chance'

So the Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis got together a week ago to talk about peace. Where was the U.S.? Pointedly not there. Read it and weep:

A major conference held in Cairo this weekend provided the spectrum of Iraq's political class with an opportunity to engage in a give-and-take about a negotiated end to the war in Iraq. During the three-day conference, which ended Monday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani made an offer to start talks with the armed Iraqi fighters. "If those who call themselves the Iraqi resistance desired to contact me, I would welcome them," said Talabani.

But in his noon briefing on Monday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack discussed the Arab League peace talks coolly and only in response to a question. He refused to endorse Talabani's call for talks between the Iraqi government and the resistance. Instead, in keeping with President Bush's insistence on staying the course and Vice President Cheney's address at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on Monday, McCormack emphasized that "hardcore terrorists" in Iraq will be dealt with "on the military front."

The fact that the United States is not trumpeting the importance of the Cairo peace talks, and the fact that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other top-level officials did not attend it, are failures of diplomacy. Not only did scores of Iraqi political leaders travel to Cairo to talk face to face in a manner that could not have happened in Baghdad, but the meeting was also attended by heads of state, including Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and by the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran. After three days of talks, the attendees decided to convene a full-fledged peace conference in Cairo in late February or early March....

So what does the Bush plan mean?

This week, the President will tell us that Iraqi police are much improved and so we will soon be able to withdraw some of our soldiers.

The first part is a lie: insurgent attacks are up, as are US casualties. It is now almost totally unsafe for Americans to leave the Green Zone. The road to the Baghdad Airport is still not secure.

The second part is just politics--and also a lie: Americans have indicated they no longer support the war, and Bush has to find some sort of exit strategy before the '06 elections. But he doesn't plan to leave Iraq. So, in the speech he'll give later this week, he will reportedly say that some US troops can come home. He may or may not say they'll be replaced by the Air Force, which will support our remaining troops with the kind of 'precision bombing' that managed to kill masses of civilians in Vietnam.

But just consider the soldiers on the ground. Fewer American troops are easier targets for the insurgents. So the odds are, fewer troops will sustain the same number of casualties as our current forces--or more. Those poor suckers will die because the President can't tell the truth about the 2,100 lives he's already sacrificed for nothing.

Either send in more troops and complete the mission (whatever crazy 'mission' it is this week)--even if it takes a decade--or get everybody home. But putting men and woman at risk for non-military reasons--in my book, that's borderline treason.