I've been on record here for the past four years as being against withdrawal, despite being dead set against the invasion, based mostly on the notion that it was irresponsible to leave Iraq in a chaotic state and with no infrastructure.

I can no longer hold this view.

Most democrats are taking the wrong approach, and I don't support it.

But it is clear that the occupation is a failure because the bush administration is philosophically unable to do it correctly. If you don't give a crap about the people you claim to be helping, you can never make it work. And neither bush nor Cheney give a flying fig about the average Iraqi. They just don't.

It's not that we need to lose, it's that we've been led to, by bush and the GOP. God help us and Iraq, because the decider sure as heck won't.

for the defeatists stuff. After 4+ years of incompetence which even you acknowledge I don't think that's a fair representation but rather you trying to hang on by fingernail to the absurd notion that the blame for this quagmire of stupidity can be shifted to somehwere else besides the republican party. Get over it. Your party is wearing a 300 lb weight around it's neck and it's got Iraq written all over it.

That being said. I think the goal is to start pulling out before the next election both on the democratic side and republican. Democrats want it public and republicans don't because I believe the war in Washington is now about who gets to take credit for the withdrawal and not actually about whether or not we will withdraw anymore.

I have nothing to base this on but if I were a political strategist this is what I would be thinking.

I practice it on a daily basis. In poker, it's known as "folding". And if you would rather stay in til the bitter end than be a defeatist, pull up a chair anytime.

"acceptance of defeat without struggle"

There has been a stuggle - for 4 years - you lost.
Thats not defeatism thats recognition you lost.

most of the other posts here have already made most of the points I would bring up, but I would like to emphasize the fact that this administration will be the one prosecuting the war for the next two years. Based on everything I've seen, unless there's a complete change of approach the realistic position is that things will be as they are now, maybe a little better, maybe a little worse, but there will not be a clear disposition either way. Is the loss of another thousand or so American lives and several thousand more Iraqi lives worth that?

You seem like a reasonable guy BD, but when I read your definition of success I can't imagine how it would come about. The US doesn't seem to have the will to fight the all-out war against all the forces in Iraq and the surrounding countries to make it happen, and absent that I don't see how any kind of peaceful long term solution can arise.

I have done two things:

1. Promoted the post. Even with 11 votes because the author made changes, it fell off the front page. I put it back.

2. I added the break command after the 2nd paragraph so it wouldn't fill the entire front page.

Carry on.

I think rhetorically it is pejorative. Still you state to Harley that was not the intention. We as a public have never been given a definition of success. (A move that was done for domestic politics IMHO.) It is also why this administration has so little support and your view on the potential of success is perhaps to little to late.

In also fails to look at possible different views of disengagement. In most people minds the real solution has to be political and that means that majorities of all sides have to want a solution. As long as Sadar in Iran is calling for resistance he and many view that the Shia have the numbers and should not care what the other side wants. The Kurds are the red headed step child and the no fly zone as had as much to do with them being stable as anything else. The Sunni have lost the most but tribal leaders might be able to bring peace.

All of the above fails to understand the brain drain and internal displacement and how that handy caps the effort. For us to truly succeed then we need to state and treat it as a national priority. The military is if not hurting then playing politics to get more $$ etc. If we had the troops to stabilize the country we should have done it long ago.

This administration and the GOP in general has lost all credibility to even sell anything more than a band aid. You see it in the playing of politics with funding.

In conclusion I have always hoped for sucess in terms of cost benifit and putting a cluster of bad planning and horrid timing behind us. In the future we should probably enhance these tools. http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2007/04/new_army_site.html

together would be a nice ticket.

Somebody else vote this up, it got knocked off the front page when Bird Dog updated it.

...discernible progress is made by year end? If war supporters would answer that question in detail then the American public would have an easier time believing VI day is right around the corner.

collectively speaking. But the policies of this Administration led by GW Bush have already failed and defaulted to running out the clock for reasons of domestic political expedience.

There is a great line in the movie Kingdom of Heaven wherein Balian the Christian commander negotiating an end to Saladin's siege of Jerusalem appears surprised at Saladin's offer of safe passage to the city's defenders and non Muslim population, in light of the fact that the Christians had slaughtered every last Muslim when they themselves had conquered the city in 1096. Saladin replies emphatically: "I am not those men, I am Saladin."

Bush is no Saladin and it is doubtful any western government could give the citizens of Iraq what they truly want. But collectively we ought to be able to convince the people of Iraq and the wider ME that we are not those men. Sadly, I see no real prospect of this until Bush leaves office.

I think it's dangerous and simplistic to think of outcomes in a positive/dispositive way. There is a ton of possible outcomes in Iraq... we need to be thinking about maximizing our chances at getting a better outcome, rather than getting mired in this all or nothing mentality.

I don't believe Democrats are defeatists. They believe there was nothing to "win" in Iraq to begin with, and the important war (against global terrorism) received a setback (not a defeat) when we committed troops to Iraq. Looked at that way, Iraq is not a loss but a mistake long overdue for correction.

Having said that, I find the current Democrat position on the war is full of exactly the same kind of magical thinking, and magically unclear thinking, that informed the Bush policy leading up to Iraq. "Iraq will take care of itself if we just leave," is the current Democrat rationalization. I'll repost from earlier today what I think of this reasoning:

I can't decide if that statement is oversimplistic or just wrong. You're aware that in-country and regional factionalism has created a low-level civil war in Iraq. Clearly there is no such thing as "Iraqi" interests at the moment. There are Kurdish interests, Sunni interests which aren't the same as Saudi/Syrian interests, Iranian interests which aren't the same as Shia interests, and so forth. Turkey is involved. And there's even a beleaguered faction fighting for "Iraqi" interests. That there is no agreement what "Iraqi interests" are is the whole point of this situation. If Iraqi interests did exist, then we would be ready to bring the troops home, now that success has been defined down to "Iraq not tearing itself apart anymore." This all seems blatantly frickin obvious.

I wish I could somehow communicate just how callous and unrealistic your statements -- and the current attitude of the Democrat base -- seem to me, nearly as much so as any neocon pipe dream I've read in the past 5 years. "Let Iraqis salvage what they can" is the "let them eat cake" of our time. You are, in my opinion, engaging in pure magical thinking of exactly the same order as Bill Kristol and Cheney were selling four years ago: If only we leave, then Iraq will self-correct. This is exactly the same kind of thinking that led to "they'll greet us with flowers and candy." Only reversed: "they'll send us off with flowers and candy." Cheney said "Let's invade and give Iraqis their freedom." You say "Let's leave and give Iraqis their freedom." Neither statement bears any relation to actual events in Iraq.

My point of view: having gone there, toppled the government, disbanded the army and police forces, destroyed or neglected public services, and completely overturned regional balance of power, we now have a positive obligation to do everything in our power to restore at least a minimum of the security we've taken away from these people. Right now that means counterinsurgency and stable political solutions, *not* precipitating a full-scale civil war by leaving and tipping the scales of power once again.

...So I disagree that Democrats are defeatist. I do agree they are wilfully ignoring the likely consequences of their own policy and have become impervious to criticism. Just like Bush.

I've said it in other venues--and I'll say it here--that if we don't make discernible progress by year end, I may just join the defeatists and call for a phased withdrawal

Given that the Democratic timelines are for either March 2008 or August 2008 IIRC, I don't see how you get to call them defeatist when your own timeline for assessing progress provides far less time for the surge to work.

Yes, I know, the Dem timelines are predicated on the surge failing, because we've already lost... but in practice, isn't your wait-until-year-end pretty much the same as the much more distant withdrawal dates proposed by Dems? I mean, if we're gonna know in say six months if the surge worked, why can't we commit to wrapping things up in 1.5 more years?

Paraphrasing another poster here (Trickster? can't find it offhand), I'd like to give the administration flexibility to achieve the best possible outcome in Iraq, leaving aside the past mistakes, but it's hard to believe this particular administration is going to magically get the final phase right when they've botched everything up to this point.

First, Spin sorta nails it above. I guess it all depends on how you define victory. God knows that definition has changed completely since we first set up shop in Iraq. I'm guessing it will change in the future as well.

As for the honesty required to simply say "because we lost" -- there's plenty of that around, and much of it from former military men who simply cannot believe how badly this war was prosecuted.

And then there's the term 'defeatist'. That's a pejorative, as you well know. And not necessarily applicable to those who support a phased withdrawl. It's a fighting word used by those unwilling to actually debate the pros and cons of it (I'm not including you in this group, btw.) Washington didn't retreat to Buck's county because he was was defeatist. He did so due facts on the ground, as it were.

In the same fashion, a phased withdrawl is not the end of our war on terror, nor emblematic of its failure. It is, however, the inevitable result of the Prez's ill-conceived/prosecuted war on Iraq.

You wrote: But in the last two months, there are small signs of improvement, especially in Baghdad. 26 of 31 sheiks in Anbar province have turned their backs on al Qaeda and are supporting the Iraqi government and U.S. forces in combatting these terrorists. Kurdistan is as safe as Utah, to paraphrase Michael Totten. Moqchickenhawk al-Sadr is sending orders to fight U.S. forces and launch protests from an undisclosed location in Iran, hiding behind the burkhas of his mullah benefactors.

With all due respect, there have been similar signs of progress over the past 4+ years yet none ever materialized into anything more than a momentary blip. Civilian and Iraqi security force casualties are up 25% since the "surge" began. American casualties remain constant at more than 2.7 per day (though it is double that already for April). Violence is now spreading to previously pacified areas outside of Baghdad. And say what you will about al-Sadr, but a silent al-Sadr was probably preferable to the new and more publicly bellicose incarnation we are seeing since last weekend. 20,000 troops this late in the game cannot reverse 4+ years of mismanagement nor does it have any realistic chance to end the worsening civil war. Had this Administration listened to people like Shinseki years ago and put in overwhelming forces, then perhaps we wouldn't be having this debate today. Responsibility for "defeat" lies (and I use that word by design) at the doorstep of Bush and his apologists who instead of listening to the "critics" of the war, vilified and marginalized them.

I guess it all comes down to how you defined our mission. If the mission was truly about ending Saddam's reign and eliminating any threat (real or imagined) about Iraq distributing WMDs to terrorist organizations, then we prevailed. If victory is now defined as successfully managing a civil war, then label me a defeatist.

This Administration's second biggest mistake (the first being the decision to invade) was not declaring victory and beginning our withdrawal upon the toppling of Saddam. To the extent we now "lose" this war, responsibility lies solely with the Administration for its initial decisions, subsequent mismanagement and the ever-changing objectives for this war.