This column by Jonah Goldberg is interesting for a couple of reasons. One is that he's a leading Conservative pundit who's been solidly behind the War in Iraq, almost to the point of touting the doctrine of Bush-Cheney infallibility in the War on Terror…and here he is, now saying thay the whole thing was a mistake. Another is that he's (understandably) trying to spin this to do the least possible damage to his side. So his argument kind of comes down to, "We were wrong but we can't let the folks who were right get away with looking like they were right."
Ergo, his section on what to do with Iraq seems to amount to something on the order of, "We shouldn't be there but I don't want to side with those who say we should leave because they're my political opponents and we can't have them be right. So let's have the Iraqis vote on whether or not we should leave and make that our reason." That, I suppose, would be better than departing because John Murtha and John Kerry and other prominent Democrats (and even, lately, some Republicans) said we should. For one thing, it would make all those insults of the character and patriotism of those who want to "cut and run" seem rather hollow.
I think the idea of having the Iraqis vote us off the island, as it were, sounds silly…but hey, if it gets us out, I'm all for it. We'd just better hope they do vote for us to leave since folks like Goldberg seem to have no idea what we should do to make things better if we stay. Maybe part of the plan is that we'll send Diebold machines over for the balloting, thereby ensuring that it comes out the way Bush wants.
Senator Kerry famously asked his question about being the last man to die for the mistakes of Vietnam. I think we're going to get very tired of hearing new permutations of that quote. But it's still a good question.