When Do We Admit Defeat?

Now it is Henry Kissinger saying that it's not possible to win in Iraq:

Washington Post -- Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday. ... In a wide ranging interview on BBC television, Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors including Iran if any progress is to be made in the region.

While I do not hold everything that emerges from Kissinger’s mouth either profound or true, in this case he is only the latest to accept the reality that the war in Iraq is a folly and lost. He joins a growing chorus of politicos and military experts that are saying the war was ill-conceived from the beginning and only went south from there due to an extraordinarily incompetent execution. He tries to cover for the current “stay the course” strategy by injecting the required “we cannot leave right away” or Iraq would “descend into civil war and chaos.” If I was on the ground in Iraq I would seriously question the sanity of staying put and getting shot or blown-up knowing that I could not win no matter how many of my mates died trying. Think about the logic of sacrificing more American lives and gold on a lost cause.

The Bush-Cheney administration assures us constantly that Iraq is the “Central Front on the War on Terror”. Fine, if pretty much every expert in the world says that it is lost does that mean we have lost the “war on terror” as well? Does that mean, as we so often have been told, that we will soon be fighting them in the streets here in America?

Over and over the Bush-Cheney bunch abetted by the GOP drones in Congress that their media mouthpieces have assured us and even rebuked us by telling us that all is well, that "Iraq is the Central Front in the War on Terror," that we have to win or we'll be fighting them here, and that the not only that but Mother of God the fate of civilization as we know it depends on victory in Iraq.

I guess the question boils down to whether we continue to spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives on a lost cause or cut our losses and admit defeat while trying to make the best out of a bad situation. While we have a "Pottery Barn" situation here I think we need to decide pretty quick how long we are going to linger before we head to the checkout and take our medicine.