November 28, 2006 - The President of Iraq is meeting with the President of Iran in Teheran.  Syria and Iraq have resumed diplomatic relations for the first time since the Iran-Iraq war.  Prime Minister al-Maliki is to meet with President Bush in Amman.  Vice-President Cheney has just returned from his trip to Saudi Arabia to discuss Mid East affairs with the Saudi king.  While all this flurry of diplomatic activity is taking place American forces are raiding into Sadr City to engage with the al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army. The pace of killing in what we won’t call a civil war hasn’t slackened.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has joined the calls to the Bush Administration to withdraw American forces from Iraq saying that the mismanaged situation there threatens to sink into a disaster and likening it to the Vietnam War.  At the same time the Generals are calling for a twenty thousand troop build up to fight the insurgency in Iraq.  The President did not go to Baghdad to serve turkey this Thanksgiving.  Somehow that is fitting.  Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks for God’s past gifts and ushers in the Christmas season, a time of peace and hope.  Those commodities are in short supply in the Green Zone.

Lance Cpl. Jeremy S. Shock will come home to Tiffin, Ohio in time for Christmas.  On November 19th his tour of duty came to an end in Anbar Province. Sgt. 1st Class William Brown of White Settlement, Texas is home from Afghanistan. His tour ended in Kandahar when a roadside bomb went off on November 9th. They joined 3,217 other Americans whose chairs were empty at their families’ Thanksgiving tables.  They did not hear President Bush declare that he won’t withdraw one soldier from Iraq until “total victory” is won. They did not hear the President rebuff the Iranian and Syrian initiatives. 

The President says that what is going on in Iraq is not a civil war.  He says that it is all an al Qaeda plot fomenting sectarian violence.  What voices that tell him these things is he hearing?  Surely he is not listening to the growing number of voices in his own party who recognize that a military victory is not possible in Iraq.  He refuses to speak directly to Iran and Syria.  What voices that tell him a lasting settlement can be reached by ignoring Iraq’s neighbors is he listening to? 

He stands alone, unattended by any voices of reason.  He stands alone, unwilling or unable to accept the realities on the ground in Iraq, or for that matter in Afghanistan.  He is isolated in an intellectual bunker of his own construction as the tide of events washes over him.  Like another wartime leader before him he calls for total victory while the prospect for an honorable peace fades away.  His words are simply Total Bunk!