A Significant Poll

Sometimes a poll jumps out at you as more signicant than others and therefore worth noting.

This strikes me as the case with the Military Times poll of American military personnel on Bush's Iraq policies. Its conclusion:

The American military — once a staunch supporter of President Bush and the Iraq war — has grown in creasingly pessimistic about chances for victory.

I find the sheer scope of Bush's political failure simply astounding. The liberal U.S. blogs are now tracking Congressional Republicans who face tough re-election contests in two years, as they make haste to distance themselves from Bush's new policy of escalating the war (the so-called surge strategy).

So far the debate about Iraq is about the value of competing "policies" for the war, surge, phased redeployment, etc. What the United States has yet to confront psychologically is that they have lost the war. They are quite simply headed for their most significant national humiliation since Vietnam. The political consequences, still difficult to foresee, are likely to be earth-shaking.