This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

So we cannot pull out of Iraq until the "insurgents" declare us the victors and lay down their IED's and submit to our hand-picked government and the rule of Ahmed Chalabi.

But by declaring we won't leave until stability is restored, we give our "enemies" the power over how long we stay, and how much more punishment we take. They determine when we leave; not us. And the fact that we stay is what makes us targets: not just because we are present and available, but because we also provoke the violence just by being there.

That's some catch, that Catch-22.

And I read somewhere this morning that European intellectuals and diplomats are starting to see a silver lining to the U.S. presence in Iraq: we're drawing terrorists away from Europe (which, after all, is easier to get to from Middle Eastern countries than America). So they'd just as soon we stayed.

So far from being the hyper-power on the planet, we've been put at the tender mercies of the insurgents, and we're propping up the Europeans by dying in their place.

Is Bush a great war leader, or what?