Drum roll

Kevin Drum has a nice turn of phrase:

It turns out that approaching foreign affairs like a guy at a bar with six beers in him hasn't worked so well.

So the beery Bush insists that we have to keep drinking (stay the course) simply because sobering up and confronting the havoc he's wreaked would be too painful for him to contemplate. Remember when "a democratic Iraq would be a long-sought beacon for the oppressed Shiites of the world"? Referring to his own recommendation last year for starting "a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq because it seemed like the best of a bad set of options", Drum now sees the options as being much more grim.

Was that right? There's no telling, because there's no way of knowing what would have happened if we had begun pulling out troops back then. But the decision is even starker today. On the one hand, the argument for withdrawing is stronger than ever because it's even clearer than it was last year that our troops are simply unable to cope with the emerging civil war in Iraq. On the other hand, a year ago it was at least possible that a withdrawal might help cool things down. Nobody thinks that today: a pullout now would almost certainly unleash an unbelievable bloodbath in Baghdad and beyond. This virtual certainty of slaughter is a painful reality, and it makes it harder than ever to continue counseling withdrawal.

So the choice has gotten harder and the consequences worse. Unfortunately, as bad as they are now, they're likely to be even worse a year from now. No matter what we do, Iraq is not going to be a beacon for anything for a very, very long time.