Publius,

The choice for Chamberlain was going into a war he knew would cost millions of lives with a divided nation and without the Dominions (Canada and Australia would NOT have gone to war over the Sudetenland). He chose to bide his time and build fighter planes and radar stations until Hitler forced everyone to want to take up arms and fight him (that didn't happen until Poland). Our Congress chose to prolong a war that has cost thousands of lives , based on lies and a breech of international law, which has accomplished, on the whole, not enough positives to offset the terrible negatives. Chamberlain looks infinitely smarter and more principled (Chamberlain was ethically opposed to war and tried, right or wrong, his damnedest to avoid it)than these Congressional Democrats

It's hard to know where to begin. First, it is obvious to anyone who knows anything about guerilla warfare that the insurgents are pulling the old Maoist People's War ploy of refusing to meet the enemy's strength. The Sadr Army is explicitly adopting this tactic right now. One of the things the Administration wanted was a showdown with the Shiite Militias, and they are not rising to the Surge bait. An real expert would expect that if the US went on the offensive, the insurgents would hunker down and ride it out. That Klein and his "source" don't understand this is a testament to their stupidity and wishful thinking. What it also shows is that the Administration and the punditocracy still can only imagine killing their way out of what is a political/social/religious/economic problem. They want to be third-rate Machiavellians who inspire either love or fear, when they should be Clausewitzians looking for a political solution to what, in the end, is a political problem. If ever a war was started and sustained for purely political, rather than military, reasons, this war is it. Therefore, the only solution will be a political one. But such a real solution would not allow for the macho posturing that seems to be the sine qua non of American political discourse. If, in his heart of hearts, Mr. Klein and his buddies can't reflect back on this and gloat over having "having shown those Arab bastards who's boss" then they will not be satisfied with the outcome, no matter how rosy one paints the scenario. No, these guys must not only dominate, they must be publicly acknowledged in their dominant role by all the darker, inferior people's of this earth. We wiped out Fallujah and the enemy did not blink. We are surging like mad and they are simply waiting out the storm. Since Kelien and his pals take for granted that the enemy are stupid Moslem barbarians, they will wander from false dawn to false dawn, and drag our sorry asses along with them.

Good job, fellow poster! What the hell happened to the love affair between the Beltway and the Iraq Study Group? We were told to wait for the report of the sie men, and all would be well. Then, Bush shrugged it off, and then everyone's favorite collection of aging white apparachiks suddenly became non-persons, written out of the script like characters in 1984. Now, we are importuned to wait again, because there is, of course, light at the end of the tunnel. What a farce. I'm waiting for Krauthammer to suggest that genocide is the solution, for which he will be mildly chided and then we'll just start blanketing whole neighborhoods with firepower a la Fallujah and it will be explained to us, around Hiroshima time in August, that such atrocities are unavoidable "unless you are for defeat." And since a US DOD poll last fall showed that 2/3 of Marines did not believe that torture or mistreating Iraqi civilians should get in the way of them "completing the mission" (Army respondents were split 50/50) Bush has the zealots on the ground to carry out whatever brutal orders he and Cheney care to cut (and the Media I am sure will protect us from the truth in the name of "supporting the troops", i.e. keeping them from facing a firing squad for crimes against humanity).

We are surrendering to nobody. We are not even signing an armistice. We would be, if our government had any sens, withdrawing our invasion force from a nation that never attacked us and we had no right to invade. The war was "lost" the minute our glorious leader announced that the objective of the war was a peaceful, democratic, and US/Israel friendly Iraq where individual rights (including those of women) were respected. Since that was and remains utterly impossible, by the classic Clausewitzian definition of victory, we lost. So, let's spare some lives and get the fuck out.

I went with my 12 year old son yesterday. This was a tedious, unfunny, violent, and in the end stupid film. I don't mind a quirky fun flick--I loved "Tremors" and "Galaxy Quest" and even "Mars Attacks." But this was bloated and incoherent. Shoving some nice surreal touch like the rocks becoming crabs in turned out to be pointless because the crabs in Davy Jones' Locker seem to have nothing to do with the crabs Calypso turned into (which one of the guys pulled off himself for comic effect--how the hell can you just pull a piece of a goddess off yourself and fling it like it was a real crab?). If you want to attack the author of this review for not liking popcorn movies, that is your right, but when the popcorn film pretends to be "Baron Munchausen" she's got a right to dislike its faux "grandeur."