Have you noticed how the media promulgate some ideas as if they are fact with little or no supporting evidence? They are particularly inclined to latch onto pronouncements of gloom and doom. There have been two of these in the last few days: (1) That if we ‘lose’ in Iraq it will be a disaster for the United States. (2) That President Bush’s new surge strategy is his last chance to achieve his goals in Iraq.

Losing in Iraq would certainly be an undesirable outcome and a tragedy that so many people gave their lives for naught. It would most likely be a disaster for the Iraqi people. But in no way would losing in Iraq be a disaster for the United States. It would be a huge mistake for any country to be encouraged to attack us simply because we failed to create a stable and secure democracy in Iraq. To assume that a country with the wealth and firepower that the US possesses is a paper tiger becuase it failed in Iraq would be absolutely absurd. Would you intentionally provoke a tiger because you know that someone else survived a confrontation with one? Of course not — unless you have no choice. You know that the tiger had a good reason to let that person survive and the reason was not a lack of ferocity or the will to attack when sufficiently provoked.

After the initial invasion and fall of the Saddam regime, we have used only a fraction of our military capability in Iraq. The Air Force’s heavy bombers are seldom if ever used. The Navy is minimally involved except for the Marines. The Army units in Iraq haven’t used their heavy armor and big guns to any great extent. We haven’t even considered using our nuclear capability. So it should be clear to the Irans and Syrias of the world that if they decide to attack us directly or provoke us in some other way we still have the capability to destroy them in a matter of days and perhaps even hours.

We have committed foreign policy debacles before and survived. How many times have we brokered peace deals between the Israelis and the Palestinians? There was Henry Kissinger’s ’shuttle diplomacy’, Jimmy Carter’s peace prize for the Camp David Accords, and Bill Clinton’s Middle East Peace Summit. There have been many others, but they’re still fighting. The Palestinians are even fighting amongst themselves now. And don’t forget Korea and Vietnam. It’s hard to lose credibility when you hold all the cards.

I think the second grave pronouncement is only wishful thinking from Bush’s political opponents. They don’t think that his surge strategy will be successful and they don’t want to accept the possibility that he will come up with a strategy that will work. The worst conceivable outcome for them is for Bush to pull something out of his bag of tricks and use it to achieve a clear victory in Iraq in the Spring or Summer of 2008. Obviously, if that did happen, they would have to accuse him of deliberately prolonging the war in order to orchestrate a politically timely victory.

There is no real reason that this has to be Bush’s last chance. He still has two years left as President. He and the Pentagon could shift strategies several times in that timespan. They could even decide to give the battlefield commanders free rein to fight to win.