If you want to provoke an especially heated reaction from the supporters of our current foreign policy -- those who proclaim that we must stay in Iraq for the indefinite future, and until an impossible series of events miraculously transforms a bloody, murderous failure into something they might finally dub a "success" - there is one guaranteed method of achieving that end: compare Iraq to Vietnam. Almost without exception, the hawks instantly burn with white-hot anger. Their moral outrage is palpable.

Sorting through your blog entries and the readers' emails you've posted yields the following five Iraq options:

(1) If we pull out now, it will be a disaster.

(2) If we keep going indefinitely the way we're going now, it will be a disaster.

(3) If we keep going until January 2009 the way we're going now, the new President will have no choice but to pull out quickly, which will be a disaster.

(4) Have faith that this administration will be more competent from now to January 2009 than it has been so far.

Andrew, I am through putting any faith in this administration. No significant policy they have advanced has turned out like they said it would - the budget, the environment, the cost of Medicare D, torture, WMD, Saddam-Al Qaeda, rebuilding Afghanistan, funding No Child Left Behind, global warming (remember Christine Todd Whitman promising the EPA under Bush would do something about it?), etc. ad nauseam. Have they not practically eliminated funding for civilian rebuilding in Iraq? (Gotta have that estate tax cut.)

How is the military supposed to maintain its present deployment levels for two and a half more years? Stop-loss orders?

One more option:

(5) Have faith that the new Iraqi government will be able to make up for the deficiencies of the Bush administration, if it continues to receive Bush administration help.

Is this faith justified? This seems to me where our inquiry must focus. I confess I don't have enough information to give a reasonable answer, though the reports of rampant corruption and atrocities by people in police and army uniforms are ominous. But we must realize that, if we stay, it's because we have confidence in the new Iraqi government. If we don't have that confidence, we should get out now. We have asked far too much of our military already. If we are to continue stop-loss for two and a half more years, we better have a damn good reason. Faith in the Bush administration is nowhere near good enough.