...or abandon the Iraqis. John Podhoretz says that Ralph Peters is wrong to throw in the towel.

Peters has abandoned the cause,
Perle has abandoned the cause.
Adelman has abandoned the cause.

I can tell everyone the day Simberg abandons the war

I think we should abandon Peters.

Iraq may not be in great shape but we've handled much worse, and the cost of our leaving prematurely would be huge and long lasting. We can only lose this thing if we give up. Staying the course may sound trite as a slogan but it makes sense until we can figure out better tactics.

In many ways, we have succeeded in Iraq.
Count a few of them:
(1) Whatever happens, Saddam won't be back: an object lesson to hostile dictators that our patience has limits.
(2) Libya has dismantled its WMD program.
(3) Genuine elections, pluralist representative government, free press and other Western freedoms have appeared and flourished and have been appreciated in the heart of the Moslem Middle East. Even should they disappear again, the historic precedent would remain.
(4) But they won't disappear, because at least Iraqi Kurdistan is stable and doing quite well.
(5) Our military presence has been established in new ways in a vital and very dangerous region. One can't know when and how this may save us from big trouble. Incidentally, we have surrounded Iran.
(6) An armed force with recent real-time war experience is worth far more than one without. Our troops have been tested (and proved superb), have been battle-trained, and have acquired new skills in an area and in a kind of warfare where they were insufficient. And so have our military planners.
(7) We have tested our intelligence services, too, and found them to be horribly inadequate; we would not have learned just how bad they were without such a test.
(8) 9/11 has not been repeated; there may be several reasons why - but it is a known fact that the people who could be expected to repeat it are very busy in Iraq, or have died there.