Frederick W. Kagan mounts a spirited defense of maintaining our troop commitment to Iraq, presumably part of the battlefield preparation for Gen. Petraeus’s upcoming testimony in Washington. The article is long and detailed—he takes on more than a dozen of the arguments of the immediate withdrawalniks and answers them in turn. Unfortunately, I think it’s a waste of pixels.

Will anyone be convinced? I believe that practically everybody has already made up their minds and at this point relatively few will respond to even the most articulate, soundest, and well-founded arguments. It is now a religious dispute.

Fortunately, it doesn’t look as though any prospective president will withdraw our forces completely from Iraq. No candidate is running on that platform (note in statements the words “combat brigades”, a little over half of our forces in Iraq) and I doubt that any sitting president will be willing to run the risk of withdrawing from Iraq and having things go seriously awry.

If you take the idea that a president will withdraw our troops from Iraq and re-insert them if circumstances warrant seriously, try this exercise. Imagine you’re the president of the United States. Imagine you’ve withdrawn our forces from Iraq. Now imagine you’re standing at a podium preparing to announce that you’re going to send our forces back to Iraq. I can’t imagine myself doing that and I don’t think any prospective president can, either. The questions practically ask themselves. “Were you wrong then or are you wrong now?” leaps to mind.

費德瑞克.凱根堅決果敢地認為我們的軍隊應該對伊拉克共和國負責，可能部分原因是由于彼得雷烏斯將軍即將要在華盛頓發表有關戰場準備的陳述。這篇文章內容豐富詳細——里面包含了十幾個有關立即撤退的爭論，并且給以有力回擊。不幸的是，我覺的這實在是浪費電腦顯示器的象素。

有人會相信嗎？我相信每個人心中都會已經有了自己的想法，在這樣的時刻，即使是思路再清晰、語言再動聽、結構再合理的文章，也幾乎沒人會對它做任何回應。現在這是個宗教上的爭議。

所幸的是，看來似乎將來也不會有哪個總統會從伊拉克全部撤離我們的軍隊。沒有哪個候選人會這樣做（注意陳述中“戰斗軍”這個詞，我們在伊拉克軍隊的一半偏上都是“戰斗軍“），也沒有哪個現任總統會冒著使情況變得更糟糕的風險撤離在伊拉克的軍隊。

如果你認為總統可以從伊拉克撤離軍隊，當境況變得嚴重的時候再運送軍隊過去。只是打個比方，設想一下如果你是美國總統。如果你從伊拉克撤離了我們的軍隊力量。現在假設你正站在指揮臺上準備宣布你將要把我們的軍隊再次遣送回伊拉克。我自己不能想象會這樣做，而且也相信我們的將來的總統也不會這樣做。事實上他們的腦海里會閃現這樣的疑問：你開始的指揮是錯的，還是現在是錯誤的？