From Marc Cooper:

A 12 hour workday, plus 3 hrs of freeway commuting all peppered with fragments of Monday's congressional hearings on the Iraq reports have left me rather bone-tired petrified. I'm pretty much gonna take the night off from blogging other than to state the obvious:

The Bush Administration has failed to halt the creation of its worst stated fear, that of a failed state. But I'm talking about the one with a capital in Washington, not the silly spin-off in Baghdad.

General Petraeus' report this week was wholly predictable and essentially boils down to this: a year from now we will back to the same troop levels that we were at a half year ago. The new strategy, therefore, was but a round-a-bout way to stay the course.

That course has now led to about 5,000 American deaths (if we include the untallied fatalities among private contractors) and a half-trillion dollars down the rat hole. Yet, thanks to the rank cynicism of the Bushies and the fecklessness of the Democrats, the Iraq debate has been reduced down to pointless bickering over nothing but the surge itself. Primary responsibility for this fiasco rests with the Republicans. But the nauseating waffling of the Democrats -- from the early days of them voting the war authorization, through the chicken-livered yammering about "re-deployment" instead of withdrawal and right up to the current failure of nerve to sever funding-- has amply lubricated the drilling we're getting from the White House.

It's soon going to be a full year since the American people voted to start ending this war and yet all we have to show for it are increased troop levels, a new White House PR campaign reminiscent of the Five O'Clock Follies in Saigon, and a Democratic congress unwilling to take the only moral step currently available -- blockage of any further funding of the war. That, by the way, is immediately possible with the current slim majority the Dems have. Don't believe the hooey that they are hamstrung because they don't have the 60 votes to win a bill to withdraw. They only need 41 to block the appropriation that pays for the carnage. What they lack is the political will to make the move. Period. Full stop.

This is what is called a crisis of representation. The majority of the American people have no effective voice in the life and death decisions made in their name. It is the first stage of a failed state. At least it's bi-partisan.

Marc Cooper Tue, 11 Sep 2007 05:38:00 +0000
Source: http://marccooper.com/petrae-ified/