Sen. Mitch McConnell said Sunday that he thinks “there’s a good chance that in September we’ll go in a different direction.”  He also expressed a lack of faith in the Iraqi government and, though not suggesting a date for withdrawl, said that he expects that the President will start on a course that would allow for fewer troops stationed in the Middle East.  This comes at a time when  some have said that democracy no longer should be a priority in Iraq.

I’m torn on where things stand in Iraq, and I think it’s problematic that so few seem to be in the same position.  On the one hand, it would be dangerous to our long-term security interests to allow the terrorists to drive us out of Iraq.  Yes, we are making progress in terms of the number of attacks, but we have a very long way to go.  With every terrorist we kill, we are killing someone’s friend, son, husband, neighbor, and in so doing constantly creating new enemies.  I’m all for killing terrorists, but this also has a way of creating new ones.

At the same time, the Iraqi government has proven itself totally inept.  It speaks volumes that they took a month off when no measurable political progress has been made at the national level since their elections back in 2005.  They seem to be totally confident that they never have to make any progress because we’ll take care of it, whatever “it” happens to be.  Al Maliki is in way over his head and is starting to make nice-nice with governments that are hostile to the United States.

I don’t claim to have all of the solutions, even any of them, but until some leaders start acknowledging and addressing the serious concerns of the other side, i.e. that our national security will be threatened if we allow the terrorists to take over in Iraq and that we’re in a bad situation that will not improve until we demonstrate in a concrete way that they need to take some responsibility for their own country, we’re not going to get anywhere.  Serious problems call for serious leaders.  As strong as my distaste for Sen. Warner is, I give him credit for at least proposing something.  Of the 535 other elected officials serving in Washington, can’t somebody else come up with a serious solution to a serious problem?