I pity the fool who goes out tryin' a' take over da world, then runs home cryin' to his momma!

Atrios writes:

"There will be no early withdrawal as long as we run the Congress and occupy the White House." - Bush's extraordinarily blustery red-faced speech last night.

The thing the Kleins and the Friedmans and the Bayhs and just about everybody else don't seem to understand is Bush equates leaving with losing. There will be no significant withdrawal from Iraq, if any, as long as Bush is in office. All of these people accusing some Democrats of "defeatism" because they want to encourage Bush to start pulling out troops seem to not understand or care that what they're doing is ensuring that we have the status quo until January 2009 at the earliest, almost 6 years after the start of the war.

I believe we'll call that length of time "one Bush."

What's strange is I can almost understand Bush's position. Those of us who were against the war before it started recognized that the long ethnic/ religious rivalries that were contained under Saddam's brutal regime would be ungovernable once he was pushed out of the way by a U.S. invasion. In this sense the war was lost even before boots were on the ground in Iraq.

As dense as Bush is he at least recognizes that a withdrawal from Iraq and the consequent ethnic unrest that will result will be a tacit admission that critics of the war were right. He's too small a man to let that situation arise, even if it means the deaths of more of our troops.

I still think we should get out as quickly as possible and should do so under the auspices of some sort of arab-centric international peacekeeping force. That's why the failure of Kerry to win the presidency, despite his own many weaknesses, was a true tragedy for the world.