Decisions... decisions...

Leonard Pitts Jr.:

On one side, you have Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid telling us the war is lost and we need to get out yesterday and allow Iraq to get about the business of blowing itself up. On the other, you have Bush and his dwindling coterie of supporters harmonizing on a ghastly corruption of an old John Lennon song, ''All we are saaaay-ing . . . is give surge a chance.'' Are these really our only options?

You find yourself wishing there were more. You think what a pity it is we couldn't assemble some elder statesmen and women, a bipartisan group that could study the situation in Iraq -- an Iraq Study Group, if you will -- and then report back with alternatives. Problem is, we did have such a group and last year it presented just such a report. It called for a fundamental shift in U.S. strategy, including an aggressive diplomatic outreach to the pariah states of Syria and Iran.

HUBRIS AND ULTIMATUMS

President Bush made a show of pretending to take the recommendations seriously, then ignored them, choosing instead the aforementioned ''surge'' of troops. In shunting aside the panel's suggestions, he demonstrated characteristic hubris and a refusal to face unpleasant facts worthy of his claim as the worst president in living memory, if not ever.

In response, Reid and his fellow Democrats have sought to draw a line in the sand: no withdrawal, no money. It's easy to understand why, after four years of Bush bungling without accountability through a ruinous war, they would embrace such an ultimatum. But that doesn't make it sensible.

The only thing worse than the debacle we have now is the debacle that would result if we ceded Iraq as a staging ground for al Qaeda and other lunatics.
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But maybe, if Bush would give up his faith-based foreign policy and Reid would stop drawing lines in the dirt, they could craft policies that impose accountability on Iraq's fledgling government, seek outside input and allow for an orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces. As the ISG once proposed.

The alternative is to decide which vital imperative we are willing to betray. Should we ask our soldiers to continue dying in a mismanaged and ill-defined war? Or shall we award al Qaeda a new base from which to operate?

I don't know about you, but that's a choice I'd prefer not to make.

If only the President and his team would embrace accountability, and have some remorse for the bloodshed. He really should start attending more funerals...

ADDED: In the end, you have to ask: how much longer are we willing to gut our military on this mission alone? That too will take years and years to rebuild. People don't like fighting for all the wrong reasons, and privatizing the whole shebang just won't cut it.