Cut and Run or Stay and Slay?

To acquire some useful disambiguation of the choices we face in Iraq we should set aside the false and empty notion that US policy ever intended to spread the blessings of democracy. The Pentagon may now be reviewing three options, but only because senior officers lack the necessary mental agility. In reality, there are only two: (1) Cut and Run, so-called, or leaving the Iraqis to their own devices; and (2) Stay and Slay∗, or using the chaos in Iraq as a threat against anybody else who might dare to oppose US power. Option (2), it now seems, is becoming prohibitively expensive not to mention downright dangerous. The question is no longer whether the Pentagon will realize that, but when. I would note, parenthetically, that it appears the Baker report won't come out until the lame duck Congress has pretty well wrapped up its business, leaving the check, so to speak, for the Democrats to pay.

∗ Thanks to Ed Herman for the term.