Who's the real "cut-and-run" driver?

It’s not “cutting-and-running,” it’s called “regrouping.” Only an idiot for a military leader who is not gaining ground will refuse to re-group because he is afraid of being accused of “cutting-and-running.” If George Bush ever read anything, he might have realized that William the Conqueror regrouped during the Battle of Hastings (by the way, George, he won, too); that Ike (that was Dwight D. Eisenhower, George, Commander of the Allies in World War II and later President) regrouped in the invasion of Normandy; that old “Blood-and-Guts” Patton, not generally considered a coward, did it in the Battle-of-the-Bulge, too. So did Abe Lincoln, George Washington, Grant, Sherman, Rommel, Macarthur. If he ever read, George might also have heard of Karl von Clausewitz – “Karl von Who? Karl von Cheeze-Wiz?” (Can you just hear him saying that, with the press spaniels chuckling on cue, or what?). He might heard that Clausewitz knew a thing or two about war, and knew that war is controlled by its political objective:

"[T]he value of th[e] object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it both in magnitude and also in duration. Once the expenditure of effort exceeds the value of the political object, the object must be renounced."

Surely Clausewitz, Patton, Macarthur and all the others would have agreed is that one of the very best times to re-group is when you realize the enemy is not there where you are attacking. The Shiites are not the enemy, the Sunnis are not the enemy, and, of course, the Kurds are not the enemy. Supposedly there are a few al-Qaeda in Iraq, but most who know anything about the country doubt it’s more than a few hundred out of tens-of-thousands of insurgents (and their hundreds of thousands or millions of sympathizers). Of course, we really don’t have a clue whether the press in the Green Zone, or embedded with a convoy once in awhile, actually has the slightest idea whether there really is an al-Qaeda presence or not. If so, they came there because we are there. But that’s the propaganda talking point, and the press dutifully repeats it, in order to give George Bush cover against the public fully realizing the historical gravity of his stupidity. What George Bush is afraid of is not “cutting-and-running.” What he is afraid of is the American people as a whole finally realizing that his War in Iraq is not advancing the war against terror, but in fact is weakening it.

We cannot help in Iraq. The people we are trying to install in power have none. They become targets by the very fact that they are working with us, so they try to pretend they aren’t. George Bush and Richard Cheney put us in this mess. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the real war against the real terrorists. It’s time to re-group, re-gain our credibility as world leaders, and concentrate our resources on fighting the real war against the real terrorists. It’s time to take the power of Congress away from George Bush and Richard Cheney.

There’s the 10-minute speech. Is that so damned hard? The immediate comeback to the charge of “cutting-and-running”? When his troops are bogged down, only an idiot for a commander will refuse to regroup. Only a chicken will refuse to do that because he’s afraid of looking like he’s “cutting and running.”