Stuck

So, after listening to a bit of Petraeus and Crocker's traveling roadshow, and reading some of the after-action reports, it really does appear that we lack any kind of coherent plan for staying in Iraq. Without such a plan, any talk from the administration about staying or leaving quickly devolves to tautology: we have to stay just because. Yglesias sums it up this way:

We need to stay because of these various problems … and what we're doing is working, and yet somehow there's no path from Point A to Point B — no way to connect the dots between what's happening now, and a situation where the problems have actually been solved.

More than that, even — Petraeus seems to say that we can't know where "Point B" might actually be. If we can't know what conditions are required for us to leave, we can't make any plans for that contingency, or even know what to do in the meantime to hasten our way to that magic end-point. In all practical respects, then, it's a recipe for staying forever. Which is what Bush has wanted all along. Big surprise, eh?