Win or quit

The White House and Democrat Congressional leadership have now officially started to tangle about what to do in Iraq. I can see no good coming out of this. Unlike, say tax policy or social security reform, a war seems like a poor thing to compromise on. Either we are going to do what it takes to win or we should just quit. Continuing to fight an abandoned war, as we did in Vietnam, just wastes lives without purpose. The Dems want troop reductions to "send a message" that Iraq must soon fend for itself. But without a plan for Iraq to do that, this is a silly idea. It makes our troops vulnerable and simply delays the inevitable Iraqi bloodbath (something that happened in Vietnam but that has largely been read out of our popular understanding of that war.) The administration wants to stay the course, but that's a silly policy unless there is a plan to win and I think its fair to say that this must be a different plan that the one we've followed over the past four years. If the Dems won't let that happen, its time to go and refocus our defense against terror. Abandoning Iraq may not be ideal, but it may be the best of bad alternatives.