It doesn't happen often, but today I may be a dittohead:

Fine, just blow the place up. Just let these natural forces take place over there instead of trying to stop them, instead of trying to use -- I just -- sometimes natural force is going to happen. You're going to have to let it take place. You can spend all the time you like with diplomacy, and you can spend all the time you want massaging these things with diplomatic -- you're just -- you're just delaying the inevitable.

Some on the left blogosphere (e.g. Atrios) have lumped the first sentence in the above with the "More Rubble Less Trouble" strategy advocated by the anti-Atrios Instapundit and other less visible wingers. I think the positions are distinct. "More Rubble Less Trouble" means more indiscriminant use of long-range explosives with the idea that this will work out better. It's both inhumane and incorrect (c.f. Cambodia, bitches), but it's not the same thing Rush is advocating.

Limbaugh's tone is petulant and nihilistic; he's "just fed up with it," expressing demoralization, wants to take his army and go home. He's clearly bitter and a bit passive-aggressive about the whole thing. However, his point seems to be we should withdraw regardless of the consequences. This is the only strategic direction we can take, and it's better to take it by choice than to be forced.

I don't post much about Iraq because honestly it feels like a big pointless downer. George W Bush is the only one in a position to make any kind of differences, and he thinks the lesson of Vietnam was "if we don't quit, we win." Cocksucker.

It's impossible to ignore the civil war now. When you move beyond sectarian militias, blow right past death squads and get into neighborhoods shelling one another, there's not much question.

Sadly I think it's probably all downhill from here. The only question is how ugly it will get for us before we are forced out, or how long the "lesson of Vietnam" will keep Bush prolonging the process with our presence.

I was against the war as far back as Fall of 2002, when it was clear that the Bush administration wanted it. I always thought it was a foolish exercise in hubris and greed. But my and millions of others protests were dismissed as "a focus group," and it went down anyway. And so here we are.

We've got to end the occupation. It's not working. It's not going to work. In fact, it's making the situation worse.

Ending the occupation doesn't mean trying to dodge any national responsibility. It doesn't mean isolationism. It doesn't mean "cut and run." It means making the only moral choice we've got left, and taking to first step towards bringing down the curtain on this misbegotten American Empire.

We have two options: we can end the occupation in a process we have some control over and attempt to foster a more effective (read: international) means for helping the New Iraq find a balance, or we can wait until we can simply no longer afford to maintain the empire, let the permanent bases we're building be overrun, lose many more lives, kill many more people, and have nothing to show for it but more blood in the sand, more debts and more enemies.

Go vote next week. It won't solve everything, but it will help.

Billmon has a soul-searching post up, provoked by the first post in months from Iraqi blogger Riverbend which is in itself a vital read. His post reflects on our moral responsibility for the depth of the carnage in Iraq, which is what I want to talk about for a second:

I opposed the invasion -- and the regime that launched it -- but I didn't do everything I could have done. Very few did. We may have put our words and our wallets on the line, but not our bodies. Not when it might have made a difference. In the end, we were all good little Germans.

I also opposed the invasion, but I want to point out the logical and moral trap that comes from "you can always do more." It's true. You can always do more, but you can't always win.

Let's take Billmon's point that we didn't "lay our bodies on the line" seriously. Let's assume that the 2.5M or so people who protested here in the US were all ready to throw down. Would lying down in traffic have stopped the war? Would a mass hunger strike? Would violent resistance?

I'm pessimistic about all those options. The only way to imagine Bush not being able to launch that war would be to re-imagine the last 12 years of political history, starting with how the aftermath of the first Persian Gulf war went down, and the lessons learned there. The truth is I have no doubt that at zero-hour, or even in the Summer of 2002, mass resistence from 2.5 million Americans wouldn't have stopped the war. In fact, it may have deeply worsened the situation.

At that time, it could have led to mass arrests, and those arrests would likely have been applauded by enough people. Political leaders would have been pressed to denounce the resistance. It would have made the vaguely fascist overtones of 2006 America look like the summer of love.

In my continual hope that we don't end up with a stupid perpetual war, this polling is a bit unnerving. It is from FoxNews, and uses whatever stats-screen they have to zero in on "Likely Voters," but it is s a real poll. The major indications are likely correct.

30. Do you agree or disagree with the view that the military action being taken overseas in Iraq is necessary to protect Americans from having to fight radical Muslim terrorists on U.S. soil?

31. How likely do you think it is that within the next 20 years the United States will be involved in an all-out war with radical Muslim extremists that will affect our families and way of life?

But here's a ray of sunshine: about 3/4 of people (including a majority of Republicans) say it's time to start bringing our troops home from Iraq. I agree.