Append his op-eds

I can't scream into the wind about this every week, but if they (the powers that be, the man, etc.) are going to insist upon cementing Michael Gerson into the discourse, then I think any editor in good conscience would append anything the man writes about the war with the disclaimer that the author was a big part of making the war happen. After all, it's no surprise that Gerson and people like Fred Kagan and Ken Pollack--people who are in a significant way responsible for today's disaster--would oppose withdrawal. Not because it's a bad idea, mind you, but because it would mean the entire country had turned its back on their ideas forever. Fortunately, the three of them have each other. Or, more specifically, Kagan and Pollack have Gerson around to lift the surge out of the swamp:

No one can confidently predict the outcome of a precipitous withdrawal, but the signs aren't good. Experts such as Fred Kagan at the American Enterprise Institute believe a full-scale Iraqi civil war would result in massive sectarian cleansing that "might not leave a single Sunni in Baghdad." Hundreds of thousands or more, he expects, would die.

Nearby powers in that nasty neighborhood would be tempted to intervene in favor of various Iraqi factions, raising the prospect that civil war might escalate into a regional conflict. "Even if it is kept at the proxy level," says Ken Pollack of the Brookings Institution, "proxy fights can be ruinous to countries around it."

And the descent of Iraq into complete lawlessness would allow terrorists to carve out  fiefdoms. According to the national intelligence estimate issued in January, al-Qaeda "would attempt to use parts of the country -- particularly Anbar province -- to plan increased attacks in and outside Iraq."

When pressed to address these consequences, most of the Democratic candidates offer a response similar to Edwards's: "As we withdrew our combat troops out of Iraq, I would not leave the region." So America would defend its interests from a safe distance in Kuwait. But how effective has it been to fight terrorist networks in Pakistan from a distance? How effective has it been to fight genocide in Sudan from a distance? This is less an argument than an alibi.

A horizon force is, in my mind, a good thing to have nearby not with the explicit intention of reinvading the country, but in case the new president can work in concert with NATO and the Arab League to re-enter at least certain parts of Iraq in good faith to maintain order. Leaving, of course, is more than just about reducing American casualties. It's also a signal to the people who believe they are fighting colonists that we're no such thing.

It's interesting to watch a man like Gerson, a man we are to believe is gifted in many ways, raising one confused point after another to avoid facing his ideological demise. Apparently in Iraq we need to continue "defending our interests", as we've failed to do in Pakistan and in Sudan. I guess the assumption is that our "interests" in Iraq and our need to "fight terrorists" in Pakistan and our obligation to "fight genocide in Sudan" are all somehow the same, and all equally worth the attendant bloodshed.

He's right, of course, that we haven't accomplished much vis-a-vis Pakistan or Sudan from a distance, but that's probably because there's no support anywhere for keeping American troops amassed on the borders of either country as a sign of our intent to take action. Which should surprise nobody. Because as much as men like Gerson might like to believe otherwise, there are limits to what our military can accomplish, and they stop short well before a total occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and Pakistan.