Greenwald: No matter what ISG says, "Americans are done with this war."

[BurtWorm]

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/12/principal-sin-of-baker-hamilton-report.html

Americans are done with this war. They have given up on it and want it over with. But the B-H Report has somehow supplanted the views of the vast majority of American voters as the "mainstream position." The B-H Report single-handedly cancelled out the results of the last election by purporting to identify as the "center" a position which is squarely at odds with the emphatically anti-war views of the American public that is the real mainstream.

This is what the real centrist, mainstream view is in the United States regarding the war (via Atrios):


Americans are overwhelmingly resigned to something less than clear-cut victory in Iraq and growing numbers doubt the country will achieve a stable, democratic government no matter how the U.S. gets out, according to an AP poll. . . .

Seventy-one percent said they would favor a two-year timeline from now until sometime in 2008, but when people are asked instead about a six-month timeline for withdrawal that number drops to 60 percent.


They phrase support for a six-month withdraw plan as "dropping to 60 percent" -- but 60 percent, for the American electorate, constitutes a decisive and solid majority. It isn't that most Americans have grown "weary" from the war or that they are "frustrated" and "impatient" because they like to win. Put simply, they have given up on this war, and favor withdraw -- now. That just has to be the first, clear premise for every one of these discussions.

This is what the B-H Report (.pdf) has to say about what is, in fact, the centrist, mainstream view in America -- a view which the Report condescendingly refers to as "Precipitate Withdrawal":


1. Precipitate Withdrawal

Because of the importance of Iraq, the potential for catastrophe, and the role and commitments of the United States in initiating events that have led to the current situation, we believe it would be wrong for the United States to abandon the country through a precipitate withdrawal of troops and support.

A premature American departure from Iraq would almost certainly produce greater sectarian violence and further deterioration of conditions, leading to a number of the adverse consequences outlined above. The near-term results would be a significant power vacuum, greater human suffering, regional destabilization, and a threat to the global economy. Al Qaeda would depict our withdrawal as a historic victory. If we leave and Iraq descends into chaos, the long-range consequences could eventually require the United States to return.

[izzie]

1. Now or later we did not win this one. May as well go now.

Next time maybe we will think before we go into another country to take it over. Since we have been doing take overs since we became a country I have little hopes on it. I guess it is just our history like in Europe.

[catmandu57]

2. Yes, we are done with it

For all the rhetoric being spouted by both b-h and the chimpenfuhrer, they keep overlooking that little detail, the people are heartedly, sick of this war. It's a chorus that is going to get louder and louder in the weeks and months to come, as the losses keep piling higher and faster that 60% will grow exponentially.
Get out now, let the chips fall where they will, the best thing we can do is come home and be very watchful for the backlash, because this will follow us home.

[saigon68]

3. They are dying for nothing

Except corporate profits.

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. And to save a little face for some politicians.

We hung in in vietnam long after we should, and lost thousands of troops in the process, but it did, eventually, wind up with the s. vietnamese holding their own for better than a year after we left - thereby making it THEIR defeat, not ours when the north rolled into saigon. But you know what? From the perspective of ten years later, it WAS our defeat. And everybody knew it. If we'd pulled out in 69 we wold have saved 20,000+ US lives, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of vietnamese.

The best way to stop a war is to just fucking stop it.

[saigon68]

6. In retrospect you are correct

Who will be the "LAST TO DIE" for an immoral failed cause?

[enough]

4. k&r