More Debts the State Can't Pay

Matt's points below are very well made. With honor, as with currency and strategic risk, the Bush administration has long since incurred debts that it cannot pay--that, indeed, nobody can pay. The question is: if we stay longer, do we start to make payments, or do we only incur more debt? I think the answer is woefully obvious. It's true that there's a chance that pro-American Iraqis--however many of them there are--may be endangered if we leave expeditiously. But, of course, they'll be endangered if we leave slowly, too. And, in fact, they are likely to be more jeopardize the longer we stay, if University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape is correct in his well-documented theory that occupation is what drives insurgencies and terrorism.

Mike Huckabee, who was appropriating a lot of lines from a lot of sources in last week's debate (he ripped off Newt Gingrich's crack about FedEx finding illegal immigrants), used Colin Powell's old Pottery Barn rule: you break it, you bought it. But wait: what would Pottery Barn think about a kid of, in attempting to pay for the pots he's broken, says he'll stay and clean in the store--in the process knocking even more merchandise off the shelves?

There is no honor in this war. The sooner we leave, the less harm to Iraq--and to the U.S. That's not at all a perfect solution, unfortunately it's the only solution at all.