The best bad option.

I opposed the invasion of Iraq and have been pretty much in the cut-and-run camp since then. The counter-argument that gives me the most trouble is that, having upset the applecart, we have an obligation to stay until we put it back together. I was troubled by a similar argument about Vietnam: Even if we shouldn't have gotten involved, or never have escalated that involvement, we had led freedom-loving South Vietnamese to rely on us, and we should not bail out on them.

This argument had little resonance on the left because its basic article of faith was that all but the most corrupt South Vietnamese were closet Vietcong. The hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese who fled after the North took over have constituted a fact of history the left has never wanted to acknowledge.

I'm sure that a similar situation exists today. There are probably millions of Iraqis who, even though they don't like us, would prefer our staying to a civil war between the Shi'a and the Sunni that could follow our exit. So I do not doubt that unfavorable consequences may follow from our leaving. But Fin sure there am millions of other Iraqis who really, really hate us, and will keep on trying to kill our soldiers as long as we stay. I'm also sure that they and Islamic extremists everywhere will treat our departure as a victory, just as communists all over the world celebrated North Vietnam's triumph. Still, I think that we were right to leave Vietnam, and we will be right to leave Iraq.

Of course, we should make every effort to leave in a responsible and orderly manner. But we should start now, and we should be out of there in six months. One certain good remit of this policy is that it would end whatever terrorism is motivated solely by a desire to get rid of us.

If we stay, I concede there is a chance a democratic Iraq could emerge, one that respected the rights of its minorities who would in turn agree to practice a policy of nonviolence. But the possibility of all that happening is too remote to justify the loss of life that is occurring every day, and the terrible swain on our Army that is sapping its ability to respond to future threats from the rest of the world.

Late last fall, The New York Times headlined a story by its veteran Baghdad correspondent John F. Burns: "[Iraq is] still a mystery the Americans do not know who or what to believe." The Wall Street Journal found a rare military officer who had a good understanding of Iraqi culture. But guess what? He's being transferred to Yemen. The Washington Times describes civilian government employees being sent to Iraq to sham their "expertise" with the locals for guess how long? One hundred and twenty days. And The Washington Pods Robin Wright, who has visited Iraq in 2003, 2004, and 2005, describes the Green Zone as "Baghdad's shrinking bubble of security." Does this sound like the heartening progress our president sees?