Sully spells it out:
The moral cost of withdrawal is huge. We should do all we can to provide amnesty for any Iraqis who have been loyal to us. (It does not surprise me that we shamefully haven't. This is the Bush administration.) But the moral cost of plowing on is also exponential. It may merely delay the day of reckoning. It risks sending young Americans to die in order for a president to save face, not in order to win. The truth is: we have lost this battle, if not the war. I am still inclined to believe such a loss was avoidable. The amazing restraint of the Shia for so long, and the enthusiasm for elections, revealed the potential in Iraq for a breakthrough. But this president threw it away. There is no getting around this, I'm afraid. It is reality. And if we do not get out by June, I fear an even worse one.
Of course, this is nothing new for us here at DailyKos, but as a member of what I would call the 'reasonable' right I would says his admission that we have effectively been defeated in Iraq to be very important. He is admitting what conservatives can't say and what their patsies in the mainstream media don't dare too. The game's up. Time to go home.
If we are are going to get out of this debacle as quickly and as decently as possible then we are going to have to cooperate with folks like Andrew Sullivan. How to do that is the question.