At least, that's what it seems like
Joe Klein has now done. Check out these passages buried in his
latest column just posted on Time magazine's site:
And so we have reached the point where there is only one meaningful decision left for George W. Bush in Iraq: what to do with our troops there....
Now, finally, the uniformed brass seem poised to speak more candidly. But that doesn't make a military solution to this disaster any more plausible. "You know, we're trained to complete the mission," a senior military officer told me. "And that's our reflex reaction, to come up with a can-do plan—'Here's how you fix it, sir!' But we may lack perspective now. The situation may be reaching the point of no return." Indeed, the best advice for the military to give the President at this point may not be how to "win" in Iraq—but how to withdraw creatively, how to limit Iran's influence in the Shi'ite regions of the south, how to keep special-operations and quick-strike units based in the region, poised to attack al-Qaeda operations on a regular basis. The United States has lost the war in Iraq, but the "long war" against Islamist extremism will surely continue. The most pressing issue now is how not to lose the battles to come.
There's also this subhed on Klein's column:
As his father indirectly acknowledged, the President is about to be deluged by advice on Iraq. But the best counsel shouldn't be how to "win" but how to withdraw creatively
Does all that amount to a call for withdrawal? It sure sounds like one.
As
Atrios has
noted, six months ago Klein wrote
this:
What can the Democrats do? They can play politics or be responsible. The political option is to embrace "cut and run"; call for an immediate withdrawal, as Kerry did; and hope the public is so sick of Bush and sick of the war that it will punish the g.o.p. in the fall. But embracing defeat is a risky political strategy, especially for a party not known for its warrior ethic. In fact, the responsible path is the Democrats' only politically plausible choice: they will have to give yet another new Iraqi government one last shot to succeed.
Now Klein, too, has decided to "embrace defeat," declaring the war "lost" and calling for the U.S. to "withdraw creatively," while carefully avoiding the suggestion of a timeline for that withdrawal. One imagines we're still supposed to see
John Kerry's call for withdrawal as "political" because he made it six months earlier and because he did propose specific timing. By contrast, Klein followed his own prescription of giving the Iraqis "one last shot" to succeed before bowing to the inevitable, so we should no doubt see his vague call for withdrawal, such as it is, as a "responsible" one.
--Greg Sargent
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