Gates said the political tumult in Washington over financing the military presence in Iraq shows that both the American public and the Bush administration are running out of patience with the war. He was speaking to reporters in Israel just before his quick flight to Baghdad.
"I would like to see faster progress," he said, adding that momentum by the Iraqi government on political reconciliation as well as legislation on sharing oil revenue would "begin the process to send a message that the leaders are beginning to work together."
It remains to be seen whether we have politicians back home playing the bad cop role or whether they are simply bad cops.
This effort should remind us all that the military is a shield to allow other avenues of progress to open up. The military is a necessary component but only one part of winning.
We are trying to make the Sunni Arabs feel safe enough from Sunni terrorists enforcing help and Shia death squads meting out revenge to essentially surrender. So we hammer the Sunni terrorists and try to keep the Shia death squads off the streets by political and military pressure.
But in the end, we are trying to get the Sunni Arabs to follow through on their growing knowledge that they've lost the war.
