Cut and Run?

Per my post yesterday, Iraq is slowly but surely melting down into a civil war.

And with US Congressional elections next year, looks like it's time to cut and run,

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld met with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari and the top U.S. commander in Iraq Wednesday and discussed specific steps to speed preparations for the withdrawal of some of the 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq beginning as early as next spring.

The tone of statements by Rumsfeld and Jafari, as well as the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, suggested a heightened determination and immediacy to planning for the U.S. troop reduction, despite the continuation of lethal daily attacks by insurgents in Iraq.

General Casey, paddling up the river Denial said,

...the insurgency in Iraq is stagnating. "Insurgencies need progress to survive, and this insurgency is not progressing. What you're seeing is a change in tactics to more violent, more visible attacks against civilians, and that's a no-win strategy," he said.

But despite more lethal attacks, Casey said, "the level of attacks they've been able to generate has not increased substantially over what we've seen over the past year."

apparently, Gen Casey doesn't know that the goal of the insurgents is civil war, in which case attacking those with whom you wish to have a civil war is a probably the best strategy.

At this point, pulling out is probably the best course, for the US. For the Iraqis I'm not so sure. We have foisted this situation on them. They didn't ask to be "liberated" and now it looks like we will be leaving just as the civil war begins.

And yet my R friends see nothing wrong with Bush's policy choices and can't understand why he has so many critics.