Just who is driving this Iraq train?

This coming week includes reports by our top General and top Diplomat in Iraq. Both are sharp as tacks. Much in the American media suggests we will hang our hat on what they say and recommend. All this is amplified by the ignorance of Congress who required a Presidential report vice report by these lowers, and now is bad mouthing what the Presidential report they required may say, ahead of time. It is obvious that these Congressmen don’t even know about which they mandated, especially since their staff’s did most of the work. Ignorance is not bliss when running a country, or even running a country down. This principle applies to elected representatives, and their hired staffs.

Mob mentality variations rule. Those who write on everything from genocide in Darfur to incompetency in New Orleans to being armchair generals and secretaries of state to global warming to social security reform to how to judge the “surge” reinforce themselves and their job security, still have respect, or at least get paid. How about America’s security, to include our future?

How about a little experience, common sense, and national selfishness? Those presently in charge in the federal executive and the congress, along with their staffs, have much education, hopefully intelligence, and little experience, both at home and abroad. They are out of their league, in American and western terms. At home, it is especially frustrating to try implement the executive’s guidance by gaining interagency cooperation (local buzzword). Cooperation and unity of effort are not natural, though it should be if run like a business. But either way, it must come from the top down, not from the bottom up leaders we do have in Iraq today. That the State Department passed 200 of their 350 surge quotas to the Defense Department says much.

If what we end up with this coming week or two is an American compromise that later brings us more Americans dieing at home and our way of life under assault, then the our enemies are driving the train. If our political leaders and their hired staffs don’t like political division, then they probably won’t like being superceded. While most of us are not politicians, eventually some consensus that we are under attack will come, and the need to do something in our behalf, will emerge. And it will be more than some commision like after 911.