Seriously, folks, Jack Murtha's done good

Over at AndrewSullivan.com this morning was further evidence that Jack Murtha's comments last week calling for a withdrawal of troops are doing some good. Here's Andrew:

"The next phase looks messy, but not necessarily more disastrous than what has happened up till now. (Yeah, I know that's not exactly a high standard). I'm hanging in there with David Brooks. It's not intellectually easy to continue supporting a war when you've lost faith in the honesty and competence of the president who's leading it, but what choice do we have? There are other good people struggling to make this work: Casey, Rice, Khalilzad, McCain; and the thousands of troops who are risking their lives in this project. The key is to grasp how little we know, how badly we've screwed up, but also not to throw in the towel when, in fact, there is still a chance for leveraging the current situation to our and to Iraqis' advantage."

The main point here is that when the likes of Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks, whom I admire for their intellectually honest support for the Iraqi war (which I respectfully disagreed with), realize that the center of gravity is now changing over there, it marks a tectonic slippage away from Bush's vacuous rationale. It's also key to recognize that our options are narrowing because of the past and likely future incompetence of the Bush administration. It's this failure of planning and policy all along that has made the presence of our troops in Iraq the problem and not the solution.

That's central to Murtha's argument, which is further underpinned by the well-evidenced notion that American troops are driving the insurgency, not controlling it. The most important question may be: Will that change with time for the better?

If the answer to that question is no, then Jack Murtha's right, and we had better start thinking withdrawal sooner rather than later. If his argument prevails, withering attacks on it notwithstanding, the Bush administration will have lost the war for the war, if they haven't already.