The more pressure on Bush to make this concession, the better for everyone. For bydoing so,Bush would cease to sacrifice American lives to a policy he knows in his heart has failed—and killing young people for a failed policy is itself an act of monstrously evil ass-covering. And by admitting the obvious, he would create some geopolitical daylight for other global actors to come forward. Maybe there would be some actual international coalition to try and make a peace there.

But on to the Out Now question. As someone who demonstrated against this war and opposed it with every fiber of his etc., I've teetered on this issue, along with a lot of other people on the left, for a long time. What would we precipitate by leaving, what sort of bloodletting? In recent weeks this attitude has seemed more and more of an American vanity. What good do we think we are doing by staying? What good have we ever done for this country? What mad dream possesses us to believe that our international acts have a quality of goodness, or salvation, when the evidence grows that every step we take in Iraq only makes things worse. And who knows what wanton indiscriminate violence our brutalized troops are unleashing outside the eyes of the Green Zone...