Recommended Reading

Robert Kagan and William Kristol are two of the more prominent neo-cons who urged the Bush administration into the course we've been staying in Iraq. The bi-partisan Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group has been, in effect, charged with figuring out a way to get us out of the mess that guys like Kagan and Kristol got us into.

In this new article, the two neo-con superstars argue that the Baker-Hamilton recommendations are (a) nothing new and (b) not likely to change what Bush does. Sadly, I think they may be right on both counts.

The one thing the Iraq Study Group does accomplish, however, is that it changes the nature of the national debate. For right or wrong, good or ill, the notion that the war is "winnable" (whatever that means) and that we should just keep on keeping on has become a fading minority viewpoint. Not many people are saying it and of those who are, the majority seem to be doing so out of blind stubbornness, more so than any conviction that the sacrifice will prove worth it. Getting out in the least damaging way is now the bipartisan consensus…even if all those bipartisans don't seem to have any idea how to make it happen.