When will it end?

I feel like I need to say something about Iraq, but I don’t know where to start. The violence has intensified in the last month, with US casualties at their highest levels since the war began, and we aren’t even mounting an offensive now, as we had been at other deadly times during the war--just essentially defending ourselves and trying to stem the violence.

Perhaps one small hope is that this heightened violence, coupled with our continued inability to slow it even in Baghdad, where we have concentrated our troop levels will finally bring about a much-needed and long-awaited change in our policy.

Republicans, including the administration, are finally starting to hint that changes (not so ironically along the lines of those advanced by a number of Democrats) will be pursued.

Now my only hope is that the administration won’t again take the wrong path. Sponsoring a coup to overthrow the current regime would be a mistake, as would pushing to divide the country along ethnic and religious lines. We need to remove our troops from Iraq and reposition them in the region to support the Iraqi army as long as it proves productive. And at the same time we need to continue training the Iraqi army and police and to resume funding the reconstruction.

Far too many Americans and Iraqis have died in this fiasco, and we need to begin the process of ending it now.