This was the month in President Obama’s term that U.S. troops would be  home from Iraq, or at least as he promised, 16 months after inauguration.  Then the deadline was extended to 19 months (September) and depending upon the situation on the ground there, such a decision may be postponed indefinitely. After all, the SOFA calls for U.S. troops to be in Iraq until 2011 and given the unstable political situation, lots of armed groups and the uncertain status of Iraq police and armed forces to hold the nation together, the idea of keeping 50,000 troops in Iraq the way the U.S keeps troops in Europe, South Korea, Japan, Bahrain, Qatar, practically all over the world, may very well follow along the same lines.

And while troops remain in Iraq (although in fewer numbers) more troop are now in Afghanistan, readying themselves something that seems like an offensive, but not quite an offensive according U.S. commanding general Stanley McChrystal. But if this military operation that’s not quite a military operation does not achieve its objectives, there’s no back-up plan. It seems like this is an all or nothing gamble.

So after 16 months, U.S. troops are still in Iraq even though they were promised to be out and the war has been escalated both in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan but without any clear objective as to where all this escalation goes if it doesn’t succeed, or if there’s a simple strategy for success.

And yet this situation, sadly, is not being protested outside of few nor really being acknowledge by many, either in the news or in the blogosphere. Glenn Greenwald, may have the answer as to why:

“most Republicans won’t question a war their President began and most Democrats won’t question a war their President has vigorously embraced as his own”

Exactly. Thus when neither side in D.C. wants to engage in debate, there is no debate. The country goes on simply doing whatever it is doing at the moment and everyone worries about what’s the latest hot topic in the news.  Say what you want about the neocons but at least they’ll still talk about the war if you ask them. But they don’t mind the current situation at all. It suits them just fine, the silent war.

The silence is even more deafening on the Left. It was on the Left blogosphere that the debate over the war burned red hot from 2005-08. It played a role in its formation.  However in 2010, all’s quiet on that front. Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly is readying his his 20th post about Rand Paul (one more and he gets a set of steak knives) in the last three weeks, Lady Gaga talks about lupus over at HuffPOst and Daily Kos talks about the campaign in North Carolina’s Eighth Congressional District. Not that there’s been a news blackout of the war (yet) on any of these sites or others, but even posts from someone like Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, a blogosphere pioneer who was a fierce critic of the Bush II Administration’s policies,  lack the fire they once had when it was the GOP  in charge of their own war.

I can understand that unlike the neocons, the Left blogosphere doesn’t have their hearts into this enterprise. Supporting the war in the name of feminism or homosexual rights in  Afghanistan when little kids are getting blown apart in villages after unmanned predator drone attacks is not something they want to do either. And when you’ve gotten to the point of becoming Administration’s house organ in the blogosphere as WaMo has become, the last thing you’re going to do is make a point of an unkempt promise. Or perhaps its something more sinister as Greenwald says:

“war is basically the permanent American condition:  war is who we are and what we do as a nation.  We’re essentially a war fighting state.  We have been at “war” the entire last decade (as well as largley non-stop for the decades which preceded it), and continue now to be at “war” with no end in sight.  That’s clearly true of our specific wars (in Afghanistan).  And, worse, the way in which The War, more broadly, has been defined (i.e., against Islamic extremism/those who wish to harm Americans) makes it highly likely that it will never end in our lifetime.  The decree that we are “at war” has been repeated over and over for a full decade, drumbed into our heads from all directions without pause, sanctified as one of those Bipartisan Orthodoxies that nobody can dispute upon pain of having one’s Seriousness credentials immediately and irrevocably revoked.  With war this normalized, is it really surprising that nobody debates it any longer?  It’d be like debating the color of the sky.”

I don’t believe it is necessarily true we have normalized ourselves into an Empire state because its clear the war has hurt the county. It’s split apart the country not brought it together. It’s bankrupted the nation. It keeps it from recovering from economic recession (whoever heard of nation’s economy contracting during war time?) It’s caused untold damage in the nation’s credibility and honor and that of its institutions. It’s made us feel less secure. The Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress came into power based on those feelings.  But instead of taking the lead in ending the conflict, the Administration is acting like Nixon Republicans, hoping somehow they can kill for peace and no one will notice within a larger framework.  But if the recovery slows and the recession grows worse, how can they continue to ignore the war that’s costing billions of paper money each day, still killing soliders, still keeping oil prices high, still setting off terrorist alerts and is something the Administration has failed to bring to a conclusion despite its promises?

But the problem is, as Greenwald says and is true, someone in the national leadership has to point this out. Or it will remain quiet.