I do not think the presidential candidates, on either side, have really come to terms with the fact that two F.U.s or a few more B.S.s from now Iraq will still be a problem. Iraqis will still be getting killed. American soldiers will still be getting killed. The war and its architects will remain incredibly unpopular.
As Henley writes:
The pattern has always been:
1. Declare that we must stay in Iraq to prevent some Bad Thing from happening.
2. Bad Thing happens anyway.
3. Declare that we must stay in Iraq to prevent some Worse Thing from happening.
4. Worse Thing happens anyway.
5. Reiterate sequence.
At no point does the “Sensible Center” consider that the previous failures implicate our ability to fulfill the new mission, which is always paradoxically grander in scale while being a retreat from previous ambitions.