Dick Clarke's book makes a very strong case for why it was such a horrible, tragic decision [to have invaded Iraq]. And you won't find anyone who opposed invading Iraq more strongly than I did -- for a whole number of reasons, many of which are yet to come. But we no longer have the luxury of deciding whether to invade. We did invade. Circumstances have changed irrevocably. Given our current position on the chess board, [the situation] requires us to stay in, not to pull out or get weak-in-the-knees (though I find it distasteful to talk about willpower when it's not my ass in the Sunni Triangle crossfire). That's why Kucinich's argument that if-it's-wrong-to-go-in-it's-wrong-to-stay-in is just not correct. He failed to factor new circumstances into the equation.

Especially after reading Clarke's history of terrorism, there's just no doubt that pulling out or wavering would be the worst possible response -- for America and the people of Iraq. Saddam, as bad as he was, was a cork in the dam that prevented the ethnic hatred from flooding the country. We removed Saddam and stuck ourselves into the hole in the dam. And if we leave, civil war -- violent, horrible civil war and humanitarian disasters -- will follow. Terrorists will fill the vacuum. Radicals will be encouraged. Israel would be threatened. Pakistan would be destabilized (everyone should say a little prayer for Musharraf every night). Just imagine Lebanon or the Balkans and multiply it several-fold and I suspect you're getting close.

We're in and we can't leave until we can establish some permanent stability (even if it takes 50 years). Obviously, we can't do it alone. But we can't back out either.

Publius is exactly right, and correct as well in saying that it's vital that we get the U.N. involved. (He's probably correct about needing more troops there as well, the only problem being that my understanding is that we don't really have any troops available to send, given the "leaner, meaner" military as shaped by Rumsfeld. This is yet another reason to get the U.N. into the picture, in order to get some forces fromother countries -- but the U.N. will almost certainly reject the idea of sending peacekeepers in until the security situation is stabilized, which we really can't do without additional troops. This is a Gordian knot which will have to be cut in some manner, but I don't know how.)

So Publius and I are on the same page, but the problem is that the solution requires the Bush administration to behave in a way that it has yet to show itself capable of doing, which is to say to respond to empirical facts with rational decisions to implement effective plans to alleviate the observed problem. This kind of rational and empirical response seems to be almost completely beyond their ken, preferring as they do to act out of ideological consideration through dogmatic decisions based on badly warped perceptions.

So what we are faced with is not the more theoretical question of what is the best thing to do in the current circumstances in Iraq, but which of the realistically available options would be better, allowing the Bush administration to continue making a complete mess of the occupation, or getting them out of the picture entirely, given that if they stay they won't make the right decisions or do the right things?

It seems to me that the answer is still that we have to stay, that no matter how much worse things get under Bush's misadministration, it's still better than the anarachy of the civil war that will result if we were to pull out, the vacuum that would be created in the region, and the breeding ground for terrorism (a la Afghanistan after the Russians got out) that would result.

Of course, this is yet another reason that it's vital for Kerry to win this election. It's not that I have any real confidence that Kerry has a fool-proof plan for how we can ultimately extricate ourselves from Iraq and still fulfill our moral obligation to the people of that country, but it is virtually a certainty that the operational, strategic and tactical chooses made under a Kerry administration will be better geared towards that goal than decisions made by Bush and Cheney.