It certainly strikes me as likely, though not inevitable, that after we leave Iraq there will be an increase in the level of violence. So should we stay? No. On Memoir Day Weekend 2006 it was true that if we left Iraq there would likely be an increase in the level of violence. Memorial Day Weekend 2005? Same deal. 2004? Same. 2003? Same.

Trend lines matter. We’ve been in Iraq a long time now, and our presence keeps not improving the situation. The fact that the actual leaving may well be difficult is no reason to simply prolong the need to leave.

Good thing the Bush administration didn’t listen to those clown in the Intelligence Community:

Months before the invasion of Iraq, U.S. intelligence agencies predicted that it would likely spark violent sectarian divides and provide al-Qaeda with new opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Analysts warned that war in Iraq also could provoke Iran to assert its regional influence and “probably would result in a surge of political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups” in the Muslim world.

Spencer has more. It’s remarkable to recall that for a couple of years following 9/11 actual knowledge of Middle Eastern countries was considered a disqualification for offering opinions about Iraq. “Arabist” was purely a term of abuse.

National Journal had a cover story last week that seems to have gone offline that saw America in decline. Ross Douthat had some doubts. Wending to a pragmatic third way, I think the salient point is that America’s been in relative decline for a long time. As Robert Keohane points out in After Hegemony, the real “unipolar moment” came in 1945-46 when the United States accounted for something like half of world economic output, had a monopoly on nuclear weapons, and much of Europe and Asia was rubble.

Writing in the late 1980s, Paul Kennedy observed that both the USA and the USSR were experiencing relative decline and that the world order was shifting from a bipolar one to a multipolar one in which Japan, China, and a consolidating Europe would all play more prominent roles. What Kennedy missed, of course, is that the USSR was about to enter an extremely acute period of decline. Thus, from 1989-1993 or so, the #2 power declined so rapidly relative to the #1 power that America’s continued slow-but-steady relative decline was masked.

This led to the Clinton years, where the United States played the role of hegemon, but did so relatively cautiously. Neoconservatives spent eight years fulminating that Clinton was being too cautious and missing the opportunity of a world-historical lifetime. In March 2001, Charles Krauthammer explained:

In the liberal internationalist view of the world, the U.S. is merely one among many–a stronger country, yes, but one that has to adapt itself to the will and the needs of “the international community.” That is why the Clinton Administration was almost manic in pursuit of multilateral treaties–on chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear testing, proliferation. No matter that they could not be enforced. Our very signing would show us to be a good international citizen.

This is folly. America is no mere international citizen. It is the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome. Accordingly, America is in a position to reshape norms, alter expectations and create new realities. How? By unapologetic and implacable demonstrations of will.

There was certainly folly lurking somewhere in that column, but it wasn’t in Bill Clinton’s caution. Green Lantern foreign policy has merely proven that Clinton had this right. We’re stronger than anyone else, but not nearly so strong that it doesn’t benefit us to play nicely with others.

Sharon Burke says you should stop tarring her and her colleagues with the generic “centrist” brush:

The United States needs to get out of the war in Iraq. We should have never, never been in it in the first place. This war was a stupid idea, not just a badly executed idea.

That is my position. It is – and always has been – the position of Third Way. Well, actually Third Way did not exist when we got into this war. But I certainly know it was my position, and that of all four founders of this group. One of them, Matt Bennett, moved to Little Rock, Arkansas to work for Wes Clark’s campaign because he thought Clark was the best anti-war candidate. So let there be no doubt that Third Way’s team has opposed this war from the very beginning.

She also notes that “I hope that the people of the Middle East will have an opportunity to benefit from open economies and representative governments . . . [b]ut I do not believe that invading other nations to force them into democracies can possibly work, and I really don’t believe it can work in the Middle East.” I think it’s fair to say that I have major disagreements with a lot of the domestic policy stuff that’s come out under the Third Way umbrella, but netroots folks would do well to keep in mind that unlike, say, the DLC, Third Way has a pretty good foreign policy track record. Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck, authors of this new Third Way report on national security, for example, were also Iraq War opponents from the beginning.