That was my reaction upon reading your first words, Tom. Nothing but jingoism, starting with defining acting in the best interests of the United States as "defeat". It would be a defeat for Bush and the GOP, it would be a defeat for a demonstrably failed policy and a strategy proved clueless. It would be a defeat for future Republican political fortunes. But it would be an undeniable win for America to effectively increase our military power by freeing a large fraction of it from a situation in which it's contributing little to our security, making it available for deployment where it might do some good.

It takes a real extremist to define acting in the best interests of the United States as "defeat". It would be a political defeat for Republicans, and nothing more. Cry me a river.

Subtract the politics, and it's incomprehensible to me that you can't understand the basic strategic situation. I think the reason that people get restless when a war drags on for years as this one has is that we understand down in our plains ape instinctive hard-wiring that we've been standing in one place looking in one direction too long. We know that this war isn't working because our instincts are telling us that this is not a safe place to be, even if most of us lack the ability to express it in precise military terms.

The longer we stay in Iraq, the likelier it becomes that we're going to be ambushed by somebody who takes advantage of our distraction to sneak up on us. This has gone on too long, and that's the fundamental problem.