Reconciling the Punditry Surrounding Iraq

What do Rosie and Malkin have in common? They shouldn't be involved in future foreign policy debate for Iraq.

Perhaps we should take a lesson from the slow, steady progress towards reconciliation between Shiite and Sunni taking place in Iraq and apply it back stateside. The Iraq war has opened up a huge rift in American society: on one hand, you have neo-cons screaming that Iraq was a "good" war and every voice of dissent is unpatriotic, and on the other hand you have Code Pink / Moveon.org types exploiting death and destruction in Iraq to say that Bush's war is unjustifiable. Sadly, neither of these sides holds the solution or even offers any helpful suggestion to the current problems in Iraq.

"The problem is one that I have seen cripple our political life again and again and that seems to grow steadily worse. Liberals and conservatives are equally guilty. Neither side wants to face facts that don't fit its case." - From Newsweek

Newsweek had a great article by Charles Peters called "The Case for Facing Facts". He states that the GEN Petraues counter-insurgency strategy being implemented by our troopers in the field is having successes (having been here since June, I can say it certainly is), while still acknowledging that the Iraq war was never justified. This is an important development as prominent folks on the left put aside the rhetoric and favor a common-sense approach that will benefit both Iraqis and a proper exit-strategy that will leave Iraq with a well-conditioned security force and a stable government. The pro-OIF pundits need to reciprocate and stop this "I told you so" talking point, as if they were the ones who developed/implemented the strategy and that there were never any problems in Iraq. We need future policy on Iraq to be from a rational and logical standpoint avoiding past mistakes. Whether you like it or not, the presence of US forces in Iraq is not a Bush/Cheney or Pelosi/Boxer issue, it's an American issue. They say war is too important to be left to the generals, well I say it's too important to be left to pundits with a political agenda.