Wrong!

The Washington Post editorial pages are normally so rife with inaccuracies, outright lies, and unjustified assertions that I ususally avoid it the way an allergic avoids flowers in the spring. Nevertheless, let's take a brief dip into the murky sea of stupidity - today's fool de jour is one Robert K. Brigham (author of "Is Iraq another Vietnam?" Gee, I wonder how that suppposition turns out?), who feels "the time to negotiate is now". Let's look at some of his gems:

As it did in Vietnam, the time has come for the United States to announce a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

Well, that worked well in Vietnam! The timetable was the beginning of the end for the South, a free nation now condemned to communist rule. And how many millions perished after the fall of Siagon? Doesn't matter to Brigham, the shame of an American retreat is what he is glorifying in, and he wants to repeat the spectacle, no matter how many Iraqis must die to satiate his desires.

Nonetheless, it seems that diplomacy is the best hope for the future.

Can someone tell me when diplomacy has ever worked in the middle of a war? How many peace treaties have been written between Israel and her neighbors (Brigham argues for more, incidentally), only to be destroyed in a blitz of suicide bombings and Iranian-built rocketry? A better example might be Korea - a UN brokered ceasefire led to the permanent partition of the pennisula, where half now live in freedom and prosperity, and the other half live in slavery and famine. Oh, and did I mention that one side is ruled by an unstable meglomaniac who is literally playing with nuclear weapons? Such is the result of diplomacy within wartime...

Wars need to have winners, and losers. One side needs to know that the fight is over, and lost; otherwise the fight will never end. "Diplomacy" in Iraq would leave one side seething, feeling it had been shortchanged - civil war would rage for years, economic growth would be stunted, various Iraqi governments would be toppled, and a power vacuum would develop that would lead to an autocratic (or terroristic) government eventually taking control. In other words, decades of chaos and death - just like after we fled Vietnam! Again, Mr. Brigham shows that this is the outcome he favors - otherwise he would argue against the "diplomatic" option.

Last reason to run and hide from anything that comes out of Brigham's mouth:

If it needs political cover to engage in regional negotiations, the Bush team could simply refer to the Iraq Study Group report. Many old-fashioned realists were pleased...

If you need a clue about how far off-base and untenable the suggestions from this group of policy "realists" ( read: Sandra Day O'Connor, Alan Simpson,Vernon Jordan, and other foreign-policy mediocracies) are, note that calls to implement its provisions have disappeared from the both the liberal media and their lackeys in Congress (the Democrats); even these clowns know they can't pull a farce of this magnitude off on the American people. I dissected the stupidity of the ISG report here; I don't have the stomach to do it again.

And all of this poorly thought out psuedo-analysis passes muster for Sunday editorial page content in the primary newspaper originating from our nation's capitol. How pathetic, and what a sad statement on the lack of balanced opinion and intelligent discourse that we can expect from the mainstream media.
If people like Brigham, with their weak arguments and warped policies designed to forment more American failures, are the best that the Washington Post can offer in defense of their cut-and-run stance, perhaps there is more to the stay-and-fight school than we think. Too bad the Post is so rarely ever able to find room for that school of thought within their pages....