The president has an obvious exit strategy: Escalate.

[peace4all]

Don't Give Bush An Exit Strategy

by Norman Solomon, TomPaine.com

As long as public opinion is against a losing war and not the war itself, the president has an obvious exit strategy: escalate.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050822/dont_give_bush_an_exit_strategy.php

Norman Solomon is the author of the new book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For excerpts and other information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com

The Bush administration may ratchet up the Iraq war.

That might seem unlikely, even farfetched. After all, the president is facing an upsurge of domestic opposition to the war. Under such circumstances, why would he escalate it?

A big ongoing factor is that George W. Bush and his top aides seem to believe in red-white-and-blue violence with a fervor akin to religiosity. For them, the Pentagon’s capacity to destroy is some kind of sacrament. And even if more troops aren’t readily available for duty in Iraq, huge supplies of aircraft and missiles are available to step up the killing from the air.

Back in the United States, while the growth of anti-war sentiment is apparent, much of the criticism—especially what’s spotlighted in news media—is based on distress that American casualties are continuing without any semblance of victory. In effect, many commentators see the problem as a grievous failure to kill enough of the bad guys in Iraq and sufficiently intimidate the rest.

For example, bypassing the euphemisms preferred by many liberal pundits, George Will wrote in a Washington Post column on April 7, 2004, that “every door American troops crash through, every civilian bystander shot—there will be many—will make matters worse, for a while. Nevertheless, the first task of the occupation remains the first task of government: to establish a monopoly on violence.”

--more--

[Jackpine Radical]

1. That's what I love about Chickenshit Chickenhawk George Will.

He has such a way with words: "the first task of government: to establish a monopoly on violence."

I thought maybe the first task f government would be to see to the welfare of the citizenry.

[reality based]

2. Will only gets a part of this governing theory

The monopoly on violence has to achieve the approval, or at least acquiescence, of substantially all of the population. Otherwise civil resistance or civil war is only an incident away. A substantial portion of the the Iraqi population, seems to oppose the monopoly on violence exercised by a US imposed puppet government even though they may also oppose the violent tactics and many of the objectives of the resistance. George the Lesser should arrange for George the Scribe to call up his old man, George the Irrelevant, for a refresher course on why conservatives should oppose intervention in Iraq. There is no governing consensus in Iraq on which to build. Violent suppression of various segments by other segments seems inevitable.

[Jacobin]

3. Actually, that's Hillary's ploy

:mad:

[G_j]

4. to listen closely, some Dems saying either "win" or

"exit"

I will not support any of them!

:mad: