For more than five years, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, the Iraq war has been shoved down our collective throats by George Bush, his followers, and his enablers. But now, with Barack Obama as our President-elect, and with increased majorities in both the House and Senate, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman think that:
...it's time for the unthinkable to take place in Washington. For the past several years, Iraq has divided and polarized our parties, our policymakers and our people. The debate over the war has often been disfigured by politics and partisanship, precluding the national consensus so important to American security in a dangerous world. [...]
No longer does Congress need to be locked in partisan trench warfare over withdrawal dates and funding cutoffs. Our shared, central task now is to work together to support a responsible redeployment from Iraq, based on the new and improved realities on the ground. [...]
To achieve this, the president-elect, his national security team and all of us in Congress should seek the counsel of Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Ray Odierno ... Gen. Odierno -- as the current commander on the ground -- is the person whose judgment should matter most in determining how fast and how deep a drawdown can be ordered responsibly.
So let's all hold hands, sing kumbaya...and stay the course.