Cut and run, or sink or swim?

Here's a case for an early exit, within a year or so, from Iraq. Although it's not a bad case, I think it's too mildly put. I think the costs of our continued presence in Iraq are much greater than Abramowitz sets out. I think five years from now we'll be immersed in a fourth world war, this time over oil as well as hegemony. And I think the benefits of departure now are much stronger than he says. We'll admit the US policy to collapse other nations' leadership by force is wrong--we've always held to that fiction, right?--and we'll gain the favor of the civilized nations of the world by turning to the UN as the vehicle for international progress.

Too much to hope for? No, not when one considers the alternative.