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What's next?
Frankly, who knows what's next? A Democratic president may begin bringing our troops home and convene some sort of international conference on the war next year, but until then we're certainly not going anywhere. In fact, unrepentant neo-cons are pushing for an attack on Iran and even Syria to effect "regime change." Some people are simply incapable of admitting mistakes, much less learning from them, but no one is certain how closely Bush pays attention to these bozos anymore.
There are no good resolutions possible for our involvement in Iraq, according to a vast majority of military experts. If that's the case, in this writer's opinion, then let's get the hell out of there and save as many American soldiers' lives as we can. Whatever we do, however, and whether we like it or not, we owe it to the Iraqis to help rebuild their devastated nation.
The major question for the United States is whether we will learn anything from Bush's disaster and begin moving our foreign policy in other directions. Our frayed military forces and weakened economy will certainly put a big dent in our ability to launch more invasions anytime soon, even after we've finally straightened out al-Qaeda's remnants in Afghanistan. But is that enough of a change? Not if we want to survive in the new world the next president will face. Our Iraq experience has shown the limits of military might in our interconnected world, as well as the new overriding importance of economic cooperation, not to mention harnessing our forces to reverse global climate change.
This writer's dream is that the United States will reduce the size of its global military empire, revive the economy by creating a new generation of "green" industries and "green collar" jobs, and pour money saved from our military draw-down into our infrastructure, health care systems and education. In other words, if we're able to learn anything from the past awful five years, let it be that the country needs to spend its energy on the needs of the American people rather than in taking on the unwanted, disliked and increasingly archaic role of "Cops of the World."
