Last night, in an on-line chat, a friend brought up a defintion of insanity–doing the same thing repeatedly, but expecting different results. I’m not certain who came up with that defintion–I’ve heard it was Albert Einstein, but it may predate even him–and it’s not a definition I’ve always agreed with–circumstances do change, and that can cause results to change.
In some respects, a letter sent to the President today by Congressional Democrats could be taken as a charge that the President’s Iraq policies are, under the definiton cited above, insane. Phrased more politely than that, true, but insane all the same.
From the letter’s opening paragraphs:
Over one month ago, we wrote to you about the war in Iraq. In the face of escalating violence, increasing instability in the region, and an overall strain on our troops that has reduced their readiness to levels not seen since Vietnam, we called upon you to change course and adopt a new strategy to give our troops and the Iraqi people the best chance for success.
Although you have not responded to our letter, we surmise from your recent press conferences and speeches that you remain committed to maintaining an open-ended presence of U.S. forces in Iraq for years to come. That was the message the American people received on August 21, 2006, when you said, “we’re not leaving [Iraq], so long as I’m the President.”
Unfortunately, your stay the course strategy is not working. In the five-week period since writing to you, over 60 U.S. soldiers and Marines have been killed, hundreds of U.S. troops have been wounded, many of them grievously, nearly 1,000 Iraqi civilians have died, and the cost to the American taxpayer has grown by another $8 billion dollars. Even the administration’s most recent report to Congress on Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq indicates that security trends in Iraq are deteriorating, and likely to continue to worsen for the foreseeable future. With daily attacks against American and Iraqi troops at close to their highest levels since the start of the war, and sectarian violence intensifying, we can only conclude that our troops are caught in the middle of a low-grade civil war that is getting worse.
By staying the course in Iraq, rather than see the situation improve the situation has worsened and shows signs of growing increasingly worse.
How is this not insanity?
We can joke and say that nearly four years ago the President should have listened to Vizzini’s advice–“You’ve fallen victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is this–never get involved in a land war in Asia.” But joking’s not appropriate. Joking won’t repair the situation, joking won’t extract the United States from the Middle-East, joking won’t repair America’s standing in the world. But neither will staying the course in Iraq. We need new ideas. The current ideas just aren’t cutting it. And neither is the President’s habit of putting his fingers in his ears and humming loudly. Ignoring reality doesn’t make it any less real.