Hiatus.

I took a nice, long break from blogging here about the increasingly discouraging war, and the impact it had not just in Iraq, but also here in the U.S.

When last I wrote, there was great excitement about the change in the balance of political power in the U.S., and anticipation that many of the wrongs that had been done in recent times would be undone in short order, including (of course) a dramatic change in course of U.S. policy in Iraq.

That hasn't happened. It seems that many people who had hung their stars on the political winds no longer admit that they had ever dreamed so big.

The lack of political effect does manage to be surprising, if only because poll after poll in the U.S. has shown ever increasing opposition to the continuation of the current war (and opposition to the start of any new wars, a menu of which is continually floated before us). However, the Democrats may be more perceptive than I am in one particular regard: Americans are firmly against the war, but primarily because the U.S. is losing, not because of ethical factors or differing geopolitical priorities. If this is the case (and I fear it is), how do you exert the political will of people who elected you who are mostly sore about losing, when you've already realized that the war is fundamentally unwinnable?

This riddle has tied up too many otherwise useful minds, and kept them from doing the obvious: ending the disaster.

And so, years into this, the U.S. finds itself in much the same place it had been, only more so, and with a frustrated public along for the ride that, at one point, many claimed they thought was a swell idea. And so the American people, the Iraqi people, and a lot of people around both are suffering from the lack of vision that started all of this.