By definition, an Intrepid War Correspondent like Michael Gordon, and his homogeneous cadre of Serious pro-war friends and sources, require perpetual War as a basis for remaining gainfully employed.

Without War, Gordon and his infotainwhore ilk would have nothing upon which to Correspond Intrepidly, and the circle of expert Armchair Warmongers would be bereft of a cause to anchor their lucrative self-serving mendacity.

They're going to have their Inescapable Perpetual War, dammit, and we're damn well going to like it. So stop this unseemly cavilling at once-- don't you know there's a War on?

Gordon ...grappling with decisions on how to try to stabilize a traumatized country

As if we came across a wounded country laying on the side of the road. 'We must help this traumatized nation because that is the American way!'

Help is on the way. The bombings will continue until the situation in Iraq is stable.

You've pretty well summed up not only the stakes, Glenn, but the consequences, and not for the first time, either. What is to be done? Unlike many of the other commenters on UT, I think that this election will be a watershed. One way or another, our unsustainable situation won't be sustained.

The military/industrial complex is too tough a nut for a single president to crack, but as was the case with Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, and to a lesser extent even Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, it's excesses can be slowed, and in some circumstances even hamstrung by a determined opponent in the White House. Who among the present presidential candidates is such an opponent? Leaving aside Paul and Kucinich, who must first prove that they can be elected before they can demonstrate in any real sense that they will be able to do what they say, I think that the only candidates which fit that definition are Clinton and Obama. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, and both are preoccupied with being elected, which, whether we like it or not, has made equivocators out of both, but neither strikes me as a neocon, or a True Believer in American Manifest Destiny.

With either one in office, I think that many things would change which now seem eternal. This is particularly the case with Obama, whose very name and appearance would change world-wide expectations. Excuse me for invoking labels and symbolism in the comments on a rationalist's blog, but a Barack (=Baruch=blessed) Hussein as President, who could go anywhere in the world without looking like an outsider, and would be under no obligation to refight the Viet Nam War, would have a leg up from the start. To a lesser extent, this would also be true of Hillary -- not only because she's a woman, and as genuine a Horatio Alger story as anyone is likely to find in the contemporary U.S. -- but also because she has a history of hard work, and of real concern for her constituents.

Should we elect either one, my guess is that forces ignored by the press, and perceived only dimly by handwringers such as ourselves, who have no real way to calculate how many allies we have, will show up everywhere. Even the soulless bloviators will be forced either to take notice, or be replaced by younger people with even glossier haircuts, for whom a new generation of allegiances comes naturally.

Now back to your regularly scheduled doomsayers. They may not be wrong, but they'd for sure be out of place at a barn-raising.

“Unless you are suppressing insurgents the way the Romans did — creating a desert and calling it peace — it typically can take the better part of a decade or more,” said Andrew Krepinevich, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“The paradox,” he added, “is that counterinsurgency requires convincing the Iraqis of our staying power. At the same time, the American people view success in terms of how quickly we can pull out.”

Last I noticed, the Iraqis also overwhelmingly viewed success as how quickly we get the hell out of there.

Hillary is the Al Smith of the 21st century. Our Gorbachev at best.

Obama's platform is "vote for me because I'm awesome" (Barney Stimson from HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER)

Edwards understands we need a new FDR, wants to be that new FDR, but in his dreams.

To be fair, even if we had a candidate that would be our modern-day FDR, at this time, he couldn't run, wouldn't be elected, wouldn't win and couldn't govern.

The people of this country are not ready to accept the reforms that are necessary. The forces marshaled against these reforms still have the upper hand.

We'll have to wait until 2010, 2012, when we're just as knee-deep in shit as our ancestors were in 1930 to have a real national debate (or civil war) and a real reformer.

Until then we're voting for a placeholder.

It amazes me how the "Sober Serious" pro-war punditocracy repeatedly fails to connect the costs of ongoing occupation with basic economic factors.

This same crowd of pseudo-intellectuals who jump at the chance to opine on the "complexities" of the interrelated market system in which nothing exists in islolation, then flip 180 when talking about Iraq.

To the pro-war Iraq crowd, Iraq ALWAYS exists in isolation.

Never a mention of what the economic costs are doing to our economy. Never a mention of the quagmire pulling down our world standing, or the ridiculously high price of oil right now.

It's always Iraq-in-isolation.

"If we leave, X will happen."

Never any larger analysis of the costs of staying.

This is what renders their pseudo-intellectualism so inherently corrupt.

Juan Cole highlighted a bit of sanity emerging from historian Andrew Bacevich in the Washington Post. To wit:

Surge to Nowhere

Don't buy the hawks' hype. The war may be off the front pages, but Iraq is broken beyond repair, and we still own it.

As the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom nears, the fabulists are again trying to weave their own version of the war. The latest myth is that the "surge" is working.

In President Bush's pithy formulation, the United States is now "kicking ass" in Iraq. The gallant Gen. David Petraeus, having been given the right tools, has performed miracles, redeeming a situation that once appeared hopeless. Sen. John McCain has gone so far as to declare that "we are winning in Iraq." While few others express themselves quite so categorically, McCain's remark captures the essence of the emerging story line: Events have (yet again) reached a turning point. There, at the far end of the tunnel, light flickers. Despite the hand-wringing of the defeatists and naysayers, victory beckons...

...In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war -- and leaving it to the next president -- was to get Iraq off the front pages and out of the nightly news.

At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a masterstroke. From his new perch as a New York Times columnist, William Kristol has worried that feckless politicians just might "snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory." Not to worry: The "victory" gained in recent months all but guarantees that the United States will remain caught in the jaws of Iraq for the foreseeable future...

...According to the war's most fervent proponents, Bush's critics have become so "invested in defeat" that they cannot see the progress being made on the ground. Yet something similar might be said of those who remain so passionately invested in a futile war's perpetuation. They are unable to see that, surge or no surge, the Iraq war remains an egregious strategic blunder that persistence will only compound.

Excerpt only, follow link for full column.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011802873.html

Those of us who recognized immediately the purpose of "Teh SURGE!!!(tm)" as a giant domestic propaganda operation to eliminate the momentum building after the 2006 elections and the "Iraq Study Group Most Important Report EVAR!!!" to do something about the US occupation are not surprised.

However, I disagree with Pr. Bacevich that the occupation / SURGE!!! supporters somehow are "unable to see" what a blunder Iraq is and will continue to be.

The problem is not that they do not see this. The problem is that they do not care. If you keep blaming powerful people for failing to achieve goals that you think they are aiming for, perhaps you have erred in understanding what their goals are.