Why It Would Be Smart For The GOP to End the Iraq War

Uhhh...to win the presidential election.

Given the unpopularity of the Iraq war among the majority of the american people, why doesn't the G.O.P. try to find a convenient way to end the war before the next election? I thought one of the rules of neo-conservatism was that political issues were first tools to get more republicans elected at the state and federal level and ways to help the american people second. The war is really unpopular in an election year and McCain is forced to tow the increasingly heavy anchor which is the party line on the war. So what gives?

The Iraq war seems to be the most important issue that presumably would keep John McCain from the white house. McCain is against removing troops from Iraq until the poorly articulated and defined goal of "the job" is done, whatever that means. I think it means until people stop planting I.E.D.'s on the roads and terrorists stop trying to perform operations from that country. I think people would stop planting I.E.D.'s in Iraq if there weren't any americans or other foreigners to kill there to begin with, but then again I'm nobody.

I refuse to believe the g.o.p. is dumb enough to drive the party into a ditch when only a little thing like integrity stands in their way of another republican in the white house. I also refuse to believe that Bush is actually running the white house himself without regard for the political lives of other republicans and is sticking to his "prinsuhpulls". Therefore, I predict that Bush (through the magical puppetry of G.O.P. leadership) in October will drop a huge surprise, Mission Accomplished: Part Deux. I first thought of this possibility in light of the persisting stories of the Iraqi government giving signals that they may call the U.S. on their bluff of canceling the immunity for american citizens to civilly sue the Iraqi government in partial exchange for Iraq to allow the U.S. to put military bases on Iraq soil, which is strategically very attractive to the U.S. as they won't have to rely on Turkey if they didn't want at all as you can fly over the ocean and then over our grateful friends in Kuwait right into the middle of the middle east. Shazzam! Military presence in the most important and volatile place in the world without having to stroke the Turks anymore and saving more money on logistics than if everybody in the U.S. all switched their car insurance to geico.

But now the Iraqi's are backing off that based in large part presumably from overtures by Iran and probably other neighbors that are probably upping the ante in terms of incentives they're offering Iraq because they really, really don't like the idea of the United States being able to launch strikes anywhere in the middle east much more easily than they had been able to before.

So if that possibility starts looking like a big loser, the next best option is to not lose face by having it look like you're being kicked out of the country you "liberated" and say, "we won!" Now all those swing voters that were going to pull the lever for Obama grudgingly or not vote at all no longer have anything standing in their way to now vote for McCain. One of the biggest issues americans agreed with Obama on is now moot. That would mean a loss of major mojo for Obama and he'd have to aggressively retool his campaign to re-focus why he's still the best choice while our troops are finally coming home.

The question I still don't have the answer to that follows all of the above is, 'why didn't the party figure out a way to get out of this war earlier to help maintain political power?'. I guess the best answer I can come up with is don't give up any money you're making on the war until you absolutely have to. /shrug