I read this Krauthammer column, and gosh am I confused.
He seems to be saying that it's a good thing that after four years we've finally learned how to combat an insurgent enemy (Al Qaeda in Iraq) that wasn't there when we invaded in the first place and that this means we don't have to worry anymore about the whole civil war/ethnic conflict/complete fuckup of a central government stuff. Also, if we pulled out troops it would say bad things about General Petraeus and that's totally not fair. No, seriously:
To cut off Petraeus's plan just as it is beginning -- the last surge troops arrived only last month -- on the assumption that we cannot succeed is to declare Petraeus either deluded or dishonorable. Deluded in that, as the best-positioned American in Baghdad, he still believes we can succeed. Or dishonorable in pretending to believe in victory and sending soldiers to die in what he really knows is an already failed strategy.
Christ knows these maniacs have come up with some odd arguments in their time, but "you can't take your ball and go home because tat might make the General cry" is one of the flat-out weirdest.
This is also pretty bizarre:
We don't yet know if this strategy will work in mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods. Nor can we be certain that this cooperation between essentially Sunni tribal forces and an essentially Shiite central government can endure.
We don't know if a strategy of waiting for a shift in allegiance between Sunni tribal sheiks will work in mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods? What? As for the "cooperation," the answer is, no. Why should it? Allowing that this is one positive development, why should it supersede all the less happy developments?
The broader point is that if the argument now is that we need to accept an occupation of indefinite duration and uncertain outcomes FOUR YEARS into the war, primarily in order to defeat an enemy that did not exist in Iraq BEFORE the war... even accepting those premises, it is clear that starting the war in the first place was a strategic disaster probably unprecedented in American history.
When the maniacs who screeched for this war to begin with acknowledge that reality, then I might be willing to listen, perhaps for a second, to their caterwauling now about the alleged moral defects of those of us who say it's long past time to end it.