Leaving the Iraq War

Here's Molly Ivins' version of an exit strategy:

And so we are back to [Bush's] ultimate mistake [the Iraq War]. I'm all in favor of saving face in Iraq; they can call it Iraqification or whatever they want to. Declare victory and go home, fine by me. But somewhere, somehow, some grown-ups are going to have to admit that this whole endeavor was a terrible idea. I'm for democracy. I'm against Saddam Hussein. I'm sorry it didn't work out the way they wanted it to. Now let's go. Because anybody who tells you it couldn't possibly get worse is a fool.

She's making a point here about recognizing reality in Iraq. The sacrifices that the Republican Party are willing to require of the American people, e.g., a draft, are simply not anywhere near enough to suppress the guerrilla movement in Iraq.

Not that I think that trying to do so at this point would be a good policy. I don't. But it's entirely academic. And it's effectively too late to even try.

We should also keep in mind the very real liklihood that "the basic problems faced by the United States flowed from the enterprise itself, and not primarily from mistakes in execution along the way", as David Hendrickson and Robert Tucker have argued.

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