Long Hard Slog

William Lind writes about the situation in Iraq:

We will...find that we have no enemy we can talk to and nothing to talk about. Since we--but not our enemies--seek closure, that is a great disadvantage. Ending a war, unless it is a war of pure annihilation, means talking to the enemy and reaching some kind of mutually acceptable settlement. When the enemy is not one but a large and growing number of independent elements, talking is pointless because any agreement only ends the war with a single faction. When the enemy's motivation is not politics but religion, there is also nothing to talk about, unless it is our conversion to Islam. Putting these two together, the result is war without end--or, realistically, an American withdrawal that will also be an American defeat.