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Stay No More
They're already preparing the exits in Iraq

Writing about the press' efforts to comment on the death of Stalin—an event about which no journalist had any actual information—A.J. Liebling described three types of journalists: the reporter, "who writes about what he sees"; the interpretive reporter who "writes what he sees and what he construes to be its meaning"; and, in Liebling's most venomous description, the "expert, who writes what he construes to be the meaning of what he hasn't seen."

A denizen of the latter category, I can yet sympathize with Liebling as a growing number of experts, journalists and others grapple with the latest theme emerging from Iraq—namely how the United States should withdraw from what has become an "unwinnable" conflict. In the New York Times earlier this week, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt caught the ambient mood by observing: "Three weeks before the Iraqi election, conversation has started bubbling up on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon and some days even in the White House about when and how U.S. forces might begin to disengage in Iraq."

What is remarkable in the affair is not that such a debate is taking place—the U.S. presidential election was no less extraordinary in its failure to address the subtleties of America's Iraqi involvement—but rather the suddenness of its onset: Iraq has abruptly become a losing proposition, when it wasn't necessarily one among the public and in policy circles (at least openly) prior to the November presidential election. There seems to be a pervasive mood, shared by many with no direct experience of Iraq, that it's very obviously time to get out. ...