As details leak out, I've started coming to the conclusion that "staying the course" with a different spin is what will result. Mudville Gazette beat me to posting on this. As he notes:
That sounds like a 360-degree about face to me.
I have certainly been highly critical of the early rumors of what the commission will recommend. Lots of pro-war bloggers and commentators have been. And so logically, war opponents have reacted to this criticism by embracing and sanctifying the report virtually unseen.
I am highly hesitant to attribute events to deep plans rather than muddling through that only seems like a plan in retrospect, but it would be really cool if the administration has been planning this all along. And bonus points if firing Rumsfeld was part of the plan, too, to increase the noise around the same path--a path that will take us to victory if we don't panic.
Really, simply saying we won't stay in Iraq forever fighting insurgents has always been assumed. If this is the heart of the Baker commission report, I'll owe him an apology.
The real question (the one that has always been the question) is then whether we leave before the Iraqis can win without our help (without ethnically cleansing the Sunni Arabs, that is. If we leave too soon, the Shias and Kurds can certainly do that without us). As long as the President will make the hard choices to stay if necessary rather than start drawing down troops too fast, we can keep on doing what we've been doing. Heck, if the Sunni Arabs keep fleeing Iraq as the Sunni terrorists deliberately provoke the Shias into killing Sunni Arabs, the insurgency could dry up from lack of Sunni Arabs regardless of what we do over the next year! And is this a sign we are forcing the Sunni Arabs to confront this reality?
The Bush administration is deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government, according to U.S. officials.
Am I misunderestimating some people?
