Tell Me, What the Mission is Again?

So, what exactly are we doing in Iraq? Just what is the "Mission" and how are we carrying it out? What is the strategy and what are the tactics?

According to NYT’s reporting it is increasingly becoming unclear and deadly:

The car parked outside was almost certainly a tool of the Sunni insurgency. It was pocked with bullet holes and bore fake license plates. The trunk had cases of unused sniper bullets and a notice to a Shiite family telling them to abandon their home.

“Otherwise, your rotten heads will be cut off,” the note read.

The soldiers who came upon the car in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad were part of a joint American and Iraqi patrol, and the Americans were ready to take action. The Iraqi commander, however, taking orders by cellphone from the office of a top Sunni politician, said to back off: the car’s owner was known and protected at a high level.

For Maj. William Voorhies, the American commander of the military training unit at the scene, the moment encapsulated his increasingly frustrating task — trying to build up Iraqi security forces who themselves are being used as proxies in a spreading sectarian war. This time, it was a Sunni politician — Vice Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie — but the more powerful Shiites interfered even more often.

“I have come to the conclusion that this is no longer America’s war in Iraq, but the Iraqi civil war where America is fighting,” Major Voorhies said.

Read the whole article and tell me why we are still in this quagmire that we have created. I understand guilt. I understand that the U.S. Government has created this situation, but there is no way that we can fix the problem. Now it may be the “White Man’s Burden” to correct the problem we have created, but I am thinking that escalating our involvement is probably not going to be a solution.

Now as to the “White Man’s Burden” I think that it is very paternalistic to think that we have the answer. I believe that we need to give the Iraqi’s the opportunity to work out their religious, ethnic and tribal differences among themselves even though this Administration is responsible for exacerbating them (a mild description I admit).

It is clear that we have no idea what we are doing and what we could do to make a positive contribution to this debacle.

The U.S. has done enough damage to Iraq.

It is time to go and admit that we have FUBAR’d an entire country.

And yes, it is time to hang our heads in shame.