Remember how our left wing used to rail about wanting an "exit strategy" before we fight a war? It always seemed like asinity masquerading as deep thinking. In the end, it amounted to calculating the maximum price we would bear--casualties, money, or time, I suppose--and announcing that we'd retreat once we reached that threshold of pain.
As if that isn't extremely useful information for an enemy to know.
President Obama boasts he "responsibly ended" the war in Iraq by walking away at the end of last year with no continued American military presence. And now al Qaeda in Iraq is growing in power.
President Obama boasts that he will "responsibly end" the war in Afghanistan in 2014, and who knows if the reality on the ground will allow us to make that transition?
In the end, this is a strategy that assumes we have an enemy that will let us exit without following us home to continue to wage the war. I wrote, in part, about that mistake in thinking back in 1997:
Not wanting to repeat our experience in Vietnam, many speak of needing an "exit strategy" before committing troops. Such an approach seeks to minimize our losses under the assumption that we will at some point lose, so we had better know when to cut our losses and get out. It also assumes that the situation allows for an exit and that our enemy will allow it. [emphasis added]
As we pretend to have responsibly ended the war on terror, freeing us to pivot to Asia and the Pacific, our jihadi enemies followed us to our home territory of our Benghazi consulate where they killed four Americans. Does anybody really think these scum don't dream of attacking us at home here in America on a scale that will make the original 9/11 attack look like a mere man-caused disaster?
Addiding hope to retreat is still just retreat. Good God, would it kill our so-called leaders to speak of victory and how we achieve it?
