Iraq Paradox

Matt Yglesias makes an interesting observation:

Then beating the insurgents became the goal. Our troops had to stay in Iraq and risk their lives in order to kill the people who were trying to kill them to force them out of Iraq — we couldn’t leave until all the people who wanted us to leave were dead.

So this means that we won’t even try to leave Iraq until all of the insurgents are dead. When we are ready to leave, no one in Iraq will want us to leave. We’ll be “abandoning” all of the people who wanted us there in the first place since we’ve killed those who thought otherwise.