Armando and Jerome are talking about the politics of withdrawal, which is about where my mind has settled recently. For all the reasons I've laid out, and for all the better reasons others have laid out, I'm firmly convinced that our continued, indefinite presence in the country achieves absolutely nothing. On the other hand, I'm similarly certain that an inept or overly fatalist call for withdrawal will be marketed to the American people as retreat, and retreat is not the sort of sentiment that wins elections.
Yeah, that's craven, but once you know what you want to do, you have to think about how it sells. Americans aren't particularly pleased with the war, but nor are they ever willing to vote for a loss. If Democrats stand on one side of the stage and talk about our unwinnable quagmire and Republicans stand on the other and explain how, yes, mistakes were made, but we can still finish the job, and General Know-Nothing says we're just a few months from completion and can't turn away now, I think the Republican will win. Not everywhere, but in the close districts where we need to pickup support. And I think that because we've seen this before. We've seen it in Vietnam, but hell, the dynamic goes back to the war of 1812. The antiwar position has never been an electoral winner and I see no reason to believe it's become one now.
