Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan argue for 50K+ new troops to secure Baghdad and other central areas of Iraq. Their continuing approval of the war is unsurpising and hard to actually debate productively. After all, they seem unshaken, convinced of the wisdom of their initial assumptions, scornful of alternative perspectives. And the thought of worse horrors in Iraq is surely terrifying, and strategically problematic. But their urging for new forces to be sent runs up against a factual claim about military capacity they scarcely bother to address. "Those who claim that it is impossible to send 50,000 more troops to Iraq, because the troops don't exist, are wrong. The troops do exist." They note, in passing, that the Army and Marines are "stretched". But the authors should address this issue in some detail instead of again emphasizing "will" so disproportionately. The truth is that when the costs and liabilities of war are obscured, in fact, it doesn't necessarily take much will to continue it. Sure, the president confronts newly emboldened political challenges to his blithe persistence. But for a president so committed to this war, responding to those challenges with loosened assumptions and heightened clarity about military constraints might require even more will than pressing on with renewed intensity.

If Kristol and Kagan are in fact correct, and we do have the troops they want, putting their numbers and logistical assumptions on the table in detail might convince many people. Because their tone of urgency in pushing their original views, at this late date, spurred yet again by the imagined horrors to come if we fail to heed their counsel, does not inspire the confidence that might attach to a sober, self-critical, and careful accounting of the military, political, intelligence, and diplomatic obstacles of continued war. As stated earlier, the risks of withdrawal are real. But the challenges of any success are, at the least, rather more daunting than the hawks have acknowledged.

The DLC or their centrist friends apparently are sharpening their knives for DNC chair Howard Dean. It seems the Democrats' 2005 gubernatorial wins in Virginia and New Jersey and their 2006 recaptures of both chambers of Congress represents too terrible a record of failure to warrant his continued leadership. The Clintonites' contempt for the voices of the grassroots and for an ambitious commitment to competing as a confident political party with ideas the whole nation needs to hear seems never to fade, no matter how much evidence accumulates to suggest it should.

Incidentally, I hope Dean will address this issue in tomorrow's interview on Fox News Sunday. I should think that, given his cultivation of the local parties, getting rid of him will be easier said than done. (Of course, as Atrios has noted, McCain and Lieberman will be on Meet the Press. How great to encounter diversity of voices about one of the two biggest issues influencing the election--the other's being corruption--there, no? No.)