I’m waiting to hear you suggest an alternative that isn’t guaranteed to lead to genocide, a massive propaganda and material victory for Al Qaeda, and more terrorism against Americans both at home and abroad. In the context of those remarkable security gains and a more capable Iraqi Army, we may be headed for the lowest number of U.S. combat fatalities for any month since the war began. No matter how hard they try to demonstrate otherwise, Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Militia are being smothered, and it is they — not we — who have lost popular support. This seems an inopportune time to throw away the gains those lives paid for by so much (indeed, too much) loss of American life. You need to offer more evidence for that than a doctrinaire or partisan adherence to defeat at any cost. Surrender will mean more blood, not less, and I challenge you to support an argument to the contary.

In any event, the irony of your argument is that the one area that’s directly relevant to this post is Bush’s North Korea policy, where the only constant has been oscillation. You won’t find me defending Bush on that topic.

Then again, McCain isn’t any worse than Bush…

…and Obama is doing his best to look just like Jimmy Carter…