Destroying the Straw Man

This is trash, but a good example of crushing th straw man. Who says we have to "re-invade?" what about the Kirkuk Solution?

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Andreas Martinez
The Democrats' Iraq Fantasies
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/stumped/2008/04/the_democrats_iraq_dilemma.html#comments

Dear Stumped:
Although invading Iraq was a mistake, pulling out hastily may only compound it. How, exactly, do Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton propose to withdraw American troops from Iraq while preventing a civil war and the ensuing instability in the region? If, in the final analysis, the conclusion is that things were better before the invasion, then the pullout will definitely mark the beginning of the end for America's leadership role in the world.
-- Carl from Caracas


Dear Carl,
This week's testimony on Capitol Hill by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker once again made clear that it is easier to criticize the status quo, and the Bush administration's past decision-making on Iraq, than it is to offer a wise exit strategy for the future.
While John McCain is stuck supporting the surge ad infinitum, assuring Americans that we will prevail in Iraq in this century if not the next (and don't ask him to define success, you'll know it when you see it), the two Democratic presidential candidates have now embraced campaign-driven (i.e., fantasyland-based) tidy exit timetables.
Hillary Clinton, who is supposed to be the world-weary prospective commander-in-chief, ready to take over the Situation Room on Day One (unlike Barack Obama, who'd presumably have to spend Day One learning how to order room service from the White House mess), has now embraced a faith-based withdrawal timetable. She long resisted doing so, but is now committed to getting most troops out in 2009 -- regardless of the facts on the ground, her campaign says.
It's an understatement to call such rigidity reckless, and it's doubly reckless coming from someone who voted to authorize this mess. But at least there is an upside to her inflexibility: If the Clinton national security policy is reduced to a campaign pledge that cannot be tinkered with regardless of developments, she'll never have a need to answer those pesky 3 a.m. phone calls.
Obama's exit strategy is also muddled, as McCain has noted. Obama would essentially take most troops out soon, but keep them on hold nearby, just in case sectarian genocide breaks out or al-Qaeda takes over the country -- because then, he concedes, the United States may have to reinvade.This "the sooner we leave, the sooner we can reinvade" concept reminds me of one of my favorite college mantras: "The sooner you fall behind in a class, the more time you have to catch up!"
And I would offer a word of caution about this notion that the era of American leadership in the world is coming to a close because of the Iraq debacle. Remember Vietnam, and all the subsequent talk of American impotence? Remember all the angst two decades ago, and into the early 1990s, about the overextended U.S. empire and the irreversible Japanese economic takeover? Remember Paul Kennedy's book? It was great history, but too many pundits seized on it, and our trade deficit with Japan, to write a lot of nonsense about how the United States would soon be overtaken by Guatemala as a regional power (okay, I exaggerate).
Within a few years, too many pundits had gone to the other extreme, extolling the "indispensable superpower" when it became clear that American technological ingenuity and military might still reign supreme in the world.
The current wave of obituaries being published for the U.S. empire are as silly as those published two decades ago, regardless of what happens in Iraq. That may or may not be good news for you in Caracas, depending on whether or not you back "El Comandante" and his Bolivarian revolution.