The President says the country is suffering from war fatigue. There’s certainly some truth to that statement, but the weariness goes beyond that. The fatigue also covers the continued deployment of failed policies.

It’s no surprise the number of people fed up with the President’s war of choice continues to grow. There’s a slow awakening among the populace, reminiscent of the country’s mood 35 years ago when public opinion finally overruled the seemingly endless battle in Vietnam.

After 50,000 American casualties and more than a million deaths among the Vietnamese, we finally declared our mission accomplished and got out.

Pres. Bush long ago declared our mission accomplished in Iraq. Now all he has to do is get out.

The President is often accused of refusing to acknowledge the reality of the situation in Iraq. When a general breaks the news that it’s not going well, that the war cannot be won, he’s reassigned and a new commander is brought in.

The administration continues to argue that we can’t abandon its policies because...why?...because they’ve failed so badly in the past five years. It’s what one critic refers to as a  “perpetual motion machine of disaster and incompetence.”

It’s time to drop the false notion of “progress.” It’s the same “light at the end of the tunnel” propaganda that enabled the Vietnam conflict to continue for so many years through both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Our troops move in and we declare progress in an Iraqi city. Meanwhile, the insurgents have moved out and established themselves in a new location. We leave and they return to the original city. It’s happened again and again.

And at the same time, insurgents manage to infiltrate the local police and militia and the bloodshed grows.

This isn’t a war that can be won in the traditional sense of one army conquering another. Our progress is nothing but a charade—a charade that more and more Americans are finally seeing for what it is. A charade that Gen. Petraeus is sure to perpetuate when he gives his progress report in September.

The President continues to speak of 9/11 and al-Qaeda, trying to firm our resolve by perpetuating the scam that took us into war in the first place. The events that happened on a day in 2001 should never have served as the basis for a war against a country that was not involved.

Our presence in Iraq drew al-Qaeda across the border into that country and our continued presence still serves as the group’s best recruiting tool.

Sure, there’s war fatigue, as the president says, but there’s also leadership fatigue. His policies will lead to an endless cycle of false progress and false hope, with the soldiers on the ground paying the price.