The Alcoholic's War

Re-Thinking the War I - Andrew Sullivan

This is a good piece of re-evaluation, or at least the start of it. But in reading it I was reminded of something I concluded not long after all the pundit-speak about giving the surge a chance. I could only think of it as an alcoholic's promise. That one last chance the alcoholic begs for, even though we know the promise, while well intentioned, is false. To the alcoholic, there will always be that one more chance. Not to say that the alcoholic should simply give up, or that we should simply give up, but the chances of success are mighty slim and putting too much stock in such a promise is almost foolhardy. Until the alcoholic changes the way he looks at things, until we change the way we look at the war, we will not succeed. The problems we created will not be solved with the same mindset that created the problems in the first place. We are not superheroes, we cannot simply 'will' our way to victory. While having a strong will is important, will alone will not conjure up victory. It only gives us the strength to do the hard work necessary.