Remember the Mission Accomplished banner on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on May 1st, 2003? That was when the preznit announced that major combat operations in Iraq were finished. Sure it was all a big photo-op for dubya to take credit for our military's capabilities and score some political points, but the basic statement on that banner was true. The original mission given to our forces—invade Iraq, overwhelm it's military and topple it's government—was indeed accomplished. With considerable speed and relative ease. That's what you would expect from what is literally the most powerful military in the history of the world, right? My point here is that they were given a distinctly military mission and they carried it out. Our current problems in Iraq arise from the subsequent political mission assigned to our armed forces.

Our military has essentially been tasked with changing the culture of a people. We're trying trying to force people who hate each other and have been fighting with each other for centuries to cooperate and get along well enough to form a lasting government. There's not going to be any grand mission accomplished moment for dubya this time because there is just no military solution to the problem. How can we expect to solve the problem of ever-increasing chaos in Iraq by escalating the violence? How can we even define success? We'll stand down when they stand up isn't a military objective, it's a slogan.