And Now Voinovich

They can talk about bringing troops home or they can do something about it. If they do the latter, I'll welcome them to the mainstream of American debate. If not, they are enabling a failed occupation, which is resulting in longer and more deadly combat tours for our men and women, who aren't even finding anybody when they want to fight.

Huh. I guess, maybe, insurgents run away from superior firepower:

The operational commander of troops battling to drive fighters with Al Qaeda from Baquba said Friday that 80 percent of the top Qaeda leaders in the city fled before the American-led offensive began earlier this week. He compared their flight with the escape of Qaeda leaders from Falluja ahead of an American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004.

In an otherwise upbeat assessment, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, told reporters that leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia had been alerted to the Baquba offensive by widespread public discussion of the American plan to clear the city before the attack began. He portrayed the Qaeda leaders’ escape as cowardice, saying that "when the fight comes, they leave," abandoning "midlevel" Qaeda leaders and fighters to face the might of American troops — just, he said, as they did in Falluja.

Wow. Who could have predicted that? And while the challenge to Al-Qaeda's manhood is charming in a fourteenth century kind of way, I seriously doubt that the insurgent leadership is as stupid as, say, Right Blogistan or the braintrust of the Bush administration. Indeed, the idea that fleeing superior numbers, firepower, and technology is somehow "unmanly" is rather quaint; I suspect that insurgents would be happy enough if we threw down our tanks, cruise missiles, fighter jets, and armored personal carriers and settled this dispute by Marquess of Queensbury rules.

This is the stupid, "I'm more manly than you" logic which is getting people killed in Iraq. Including those sheikhs we're ballyhooing for "turning on Al Qaeda." Well, that just got them killed. And by the way, not every single enemy fighter we face in Iraq is Al Qaeda. This is an oversimplification of a very complex conflict that, again, people like Dick Lugar and George Voinovich have enabled.

So what's it going to be, Senators? Talk? Or action? (and does this mean the September strategy favored by the Administration is finally dead?)