When President Bush declared on May 1 that major combat operations had ended in Iraq, there was little discussion of what he meant. For all practical purposes, it seemed the war was over.
It is not.
Since the president made his statement to waves of applause from sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, 45 American servicemen have died in Iraq. Commanders say there is much more fighting ahead.
Although large parts of Iraq are relatively peaceful and U.S. military control overall is not in doubt, an amalgam of shadowy resistance forces, including unknown numbers of non-Iraqi fighters, are carrying out almost daily hit-and-run attacks against the American occupation forces.
Does "support the troops by bringing them home" still cut it? Now, is it more like "We broke it, we bought it"?
Anyone have any thoughts on this that go beyond invective? For example, what's the way forward for the people of the US that leaves us with (some would say restores) a constitutional form of government? Empires and republics, notoriously, do not play well together.