Policy by talking point

Liz Cheney's WaPo editorial piece is a frighteningly desperate attempt to distill a coherent policy from a collection of hollow rhetorical phrases propped up by ill-informed wishful thinking:

Beware the polls. In November the American people expressed serious concerns about Iraq (and about Republican corruption and scandals). They did not say that they want us to lose this war. They did not say that they want us to allow Iraq to become a base for al-Qaeda to conduct global terrorist operations. They did not say that they would rather we fight the terrorists here at home. Until you see a poll that asks those questions, don't use election results as an excuse to retreat.

[...]

Our soldiers will win if we let them. Read their blogs. Talk to them. They know that free people must fight to defend their freedom. No force on Earth -- especially not an army of terrorists and insurgents -- can defeat our soldiers militarily. American troops will win if we show even one-tenth the courage here at home that they show every day on the battlefield. And by the way, you cannot wish failure on our soldiers' mission and claim, at the same time, to be supporting the troops. It just doesn't compute.

What does this mean? How is this supposed to help solve anything? I'm sorry, but locker-room platitudes, like "winners never quit, quitters never win," are not a sound basis for prosecuting a war.

More worrisome is that Liz Cheney was actually given the bureaucratic alchemist's charge of turning this shit into gold:

The writer is former principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.