Military goals aren't separate from political goals

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the U.S. effort in Iraq is not one of military and political goals. The military is *a tool* for US political objectives. A highly trained, extremely competent tool, but one that is not somehow independent of our overall political strategy.

So when the NY Times reports that "American military successes [are] outpacing political gains in Iraq," the real translation should be something like, "Despite tactical victories, US strategy continues to fail." It's not the kind of thing where if we kill enough bad guys, we win -- we're not fighting to topple a government, and we're not fighting to take over territory, we're trying to establish a political system wherein the major groups are satisfied enough that they don't want to kill each other en masse. There have been security improvements in Iraq in recent months (though it's all relative, of course); the key, though, is that those improvements have not led to any significant political reconciliation. If anything, the main parties are more intransigent than ever.

So here's the bottom line: If the whole point of our military presence in Iraq is to establish "breathing space" for political compromise to end the raging internal political conflict, and there is now more breathing space than there's been some time, and yet there's still no political movement by Iraqis themselves . . . why are we still there?

It's not to prevent genocide (which largely occurs outside of the ability of US forces to stop), and it's not to quash al Qaeda (whose Iraq contingent is apparently vanquished and whose important members are elsewhere), so again: why are we still there?

It's hurting our national security. It's distracting us from global terrorist groups. It's killing and maiming tens of thousands of Americans. And now the Bush administration says the major political goal of the past year (four years, really) is no longer an immediate priority.

Well then.