Max Bergmann’s polite explanation of why there’s no viable “middle way” in Iraq between an indefinite military presence and an expeditious withdrawal is recommended to all and sundry. Or, rather, there is a middle way but that way simply consists of adopting the logic of indefinite engagement and then adding hope that things will just work out very nicely and we’ll be done in five more years’ time.

This, though, is just what the Bush administration has been doing all this time. The proponents of the tactical policy framework du jour never explicitly outline their favored policy as likely to fail and require the war to continue indefinitely. Rather, each gambit from the transfer of sovereignty in June 2004 to the first, second, and third Baghdad security plans to the rise of Ibrahim al-Jafari to the fall of Jafari to the rise of Maliki to the surge and beyond were supposed to succeed, it’s just that they all failed. One needs to answer the strategic question at some point of whether this is all worth it. I think the answer is clearly “no.” There are pressing, fairly urgent reasons to disengage from Iraq not least of which is the continued piling-on of the death toll. Meanwhile, there aren’t good odds of accomplishing anything especially worthwhile there within a reasonable time frame.

Fareed Zakaria:

The Democrats are having the hardest time with the new reality. Every candidate is committed to “ending the war” and bringing our troops back home. The trouble is, the war has largely ended, and precisely because our troops are in the middle of it.

Ah, those sad, sad, Democrats. So unaware that the war’s over. The dude who killed at least fourteen and wounded seventeen in Tikrit must, like the Democrats, have been wearing partisan blinders when he failed to acknowledge the surge’s success in bringing the war to an end. Similarly, the US military has these newish Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles known as MRAPs. As you can tell from the name, the vehicles are designed to be resistant to roadside bombs. Only trouble is insurgents seems to have figured out how to foil them, since we had our first instance of a roadside bomb blowing up an MRAP just on Saturday.

Obviously, though, this improvement in the tactics and doctrine of anti-American fighters in Iraq can’t be a big deal since the war is largely over. If the war were still happening, this kind of thing might illustrate the illusory nature of tactical improvements in the face of a bleak strategic situation. But since the war is “largely” over already there’s probably no problem here.