The Beltway Retreat

The insurgents are hitting their targets--in Washington.

Wall Street Journal

We need to be realist but not defeatist. We need to understand that there is a need of utmost urgency to deal with many of the problems of Iraq but we must not give in to panic.

So said Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih on Monday, in a BBC interview while in London for talks with Tony Blair. If only such statesmanship prevailed on this side of the Atlantic, where election politics and a spate of critical new books have combined to paint an increasingly desperate--and false--picture of what's happening in Iraq.

As the critics describe it, all of Iraq is in chaos, its new government isn't functioning, the U.S. is helpless to act against these inexorable forces, and it is only a matter of time before we must pack up and leave in abject defeat. "We're on the verge of chaos, and the current plan is not working," declares Senator Lindsey Graham, in one of the purer expressions of this elite inconstancy. Just what Mr. Graham would do about this, he doesn't say; but in the land of blind panic, the sound-bite Senator is king.

Yes, the Iraq project is difficult, and its outcome dangerously uncertain. The Bush Administration and its military generals have so far failed to stem insurgent attacks or pacify Baghdad, and the factions comprising Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government have so far failed to make essential political compromises. But the American response to this should be to change military tactics or deployments until they do succeed, and to reassure Iraqi leaders that their hard political choices will result in U.S. support, not precipitous withdrawal.