No Exit

First, I'm proud that i'm alluding to Jean Paul Sartre in this post...goes to show that I haven't completely forgotten 11th grade English. So today the NSC released its white paper on the future of Iraq. Seems to me like its just politics, and basic WH talking points. Let's hope they get their act together. In the meanwhile, let me just share a quote from one Mr. Robert McNamara, who in my opinion is a great man. Regardless of his actions during the Vietnam War, he is one of the few people who has taken responsibility for mistakes, and one of the few who has made the legitimate effort to fix those mistakes. Irregardless, in his memoir, In Retrospect, McNamara laid out a few key strategies for exit in Vietnam. Let's take a look:

“…the chiefs took particular exception to my recommendations that we ‘eliminate the ambiguities from our minimum objectives’ in Vietnam. As I have said, I had urged that we base our policy on two principles:

• Our commitment is only to see that the people of South Vietnam are permitted to determine their own future, and;
• This commitment ceases if the country ceases to help itself.”

So it kind of makes me wonder what the future in Iraq will be. Couldn't we simply substitute the words "Vietnam" with "Iraq" in this situation? We've seen the inability of our current leaders to look at history and make decisions, but could this be one of those times where they actually do?