End game

Is this a turning point? the New York Times finally admits to the inevitable, in this editorial: The Road Home.

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.
...it is frighteningly clear that Mr Bush's plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.
...We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.

The Guardian's Roy Greenslade collects some relevant links, and includes reference to a Beirut Daily Star editorial:

What is Bush's cause? To the people of this region, Bush's cause has long been painfully evident: to gain control of Iraq's oil resources.
...Now that Bush has completely shattered the Iraqi nation, he wants to deprive the Iraqi people of one of the only means they have to repair it.

As I was reading about 1968 yesterday, this just jumped out at me: thoughts from Robert F. Kennedy, from his first campaign speech in March 1968. Just subsitute Iraq for 'South Vietnam':

If the South Vietnamese troops will not carry the fight for their own cities, we cannot ourselves destroy them. That kind of salvation is not an act we can presume to perform for them. For we must ask our government, and we must ask ourselves: where does such logic end? If it becomes necessary to destroy all of South Vietnam to save it, will we do that too? And if we care so little about South Vietnam, that we are willing to see its land destroyed, and its people dead, then why are we there in the first place?

(Via Jack Newfield's 1969 biography, Robert Kennedy, a Memoir.)