George W. Bush's Iraq War will go down as one of the greatest presidential blunders of all time. The thought of more than 4,000 American lives lost, tens of thousands injured and more than 100,000 Iraqis killed for no good reason boggles the mind.

So do we still belong there? Amazingly, we do.

The reason goes back to something your mother should have told you a million times growing up: "You make a mess, you clean it up." ...



Our president took a sovereign nation and turned it into a leaderless powder keg where century-old hostilities are played out on the streets, and foreign agitators do their best to keep the violence and instability at high levels.

So while nothing would feel better than to throw our hands up, wave goodbye to Iraq and send those soldiers to Afghanistan where they should have been deployed in greater numbers to begin with, we simply can't do it.

Not if we are going to at least try to live up to the ideals we preach around the world.

About the only intelligent strategy employed by the Bush government during the five years of fighting was the rapid deployment of personnel in the surge strategy. Overwhelming the enemy with people on the ground, as well as using covert operations to target insurgents, has reduced the level of violence and influence of militant groups.

The big question I have yet to hear a good answer to is what happens when coalition forces begin to pull out in earnest.

There are so many sad and sordid mini-stories associated with the Iraq War.

The phony justification for the war by Secretary of State Colin Powell and others, the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the reports of misspent and stolen millions of dollars designed to help rebuild the country, the broken bodies and shattered minds returning to the U.S. from the fighting.

All this while the real front in the fight against international terrorism, Afghanistan, continues to be undermanned and serves as a training ground for the next wave of terrorists.

Amazing.

The two men who would be president have proposed very different end games for the Iraq War. Republican John McCain has talked about a possible 100-year presence in the country. Democrat Barack Obama says that a troop pullout should happen sooner rather than later once the government stabilizes.

Both prospects are troubling.

No one in their right mind can cheer the prospect of a perpetual presence in Iraq. And what assurances do we have that the bad guys won't lay down their weapons as the pullout dead line approaches, only to resume fighting once a significant slice of coalition forces have left the country.

That is the problem with the situation in Iraq – no good options for success are evident.

Thank you President Bush!

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Paul Shepard blogs the Democrat side of the election for BlackVoices. He has been a journalist for 16 years; on the national urban/minority affairs beat for The Cleveland Plain Dealer and for The AP in Washington, D.C.