Yep, I didn't say anything new, just paraphrased the mainstream view.

If by "peaceniks" you mean the fringe pacificists, sure, they'll wet themselves, no matter what happens. I think the mainstream view, though, distinguishes between Iraq and the GWOT, and we're questioning whether that's the best place to choose to do battle; and whether it isn't dragging down the rest of the struggle. So there're two parts to whether "nothing changes"--something had damn well better change in Iraq, but as for the rest of it, hell, whatever's going on must be going on secretly, so how can we ever tell if anything changes in the GWOT? If we take at face value the shaky assertion that because nothing's happened, the secret part must be happening right, we might in fact hope that nothing changes in the GWOT. Course, we don't know for sure, and that's the corrosive thing about secrecy.

The forces are presently aligned to strongly discourage the Democrats from taking a detour into ideology. They'll get a few goodies with broad support, such as raising the minimum wage. But they'll get an earful from everybody if they get too distracted from the main issue. They were elected to try and fix one component of the GWOT, Iraq, not take a sharp left turn in general.