End of the Iraq occupation?

My friend Jules Siegel, writer, artist and political analyst extraordinaire is fond of pointing out that despite what us 60s activists types think, the war in Vietnam ended the day the Wall Street Journal came out against it. Well, we're about to put that theory to the test as this op-ed effectively skewering Bush's grand plan for democracy in the Middle East was posted in Monday's edition.

God help the army that must fight for an idea rather than an objective. After somehow failing to argue competently on behalf of a patently justifiable invasion, and as its more specious arguments were collapsing, the Bush administration then pivoted with breathtaking enthusiasm to nation building, something so Clinton-tinged that it had previously been held in contempt. The more that nation building in Iraq is in doubt, the more the mission creeps into a doubling of bets in hope of covering those that are lost. Now the goal is to reforge the politics, and perforce the culture, not merely of Iraq but of the billion-strong Islamic world from Morocco to the South Seas. That--evangelical democracy writ overwhelmingly large--is the manic idea for which the army must fight.

Mark Helprin of the conservative Claremont Institute, has much more to say on the folly of the PNAC plan Bush seems so bent on plying in the international arena and also points out our vulnerability at home due to his misguided policy priorities. Read it for yourself.