There are two main choices the United States can make when it comes to Iraq. We could solve the problem (in one of two ways), or bring our troops home. Now, it's been made abundantly clear by now the sheer range, depth, and intractability of the social/political/logistical problems in Iraq that the US must confront. What hasn't been made clear is that the US could solve those problems in one of two ways:

The first is the way that the Bush Administration is claiming. I will refrain from restating their position and the actions to be taken. Everyone on this thread is familiar with that.

The second option the United States has, is not talked about much because I believe most people just don't have any idea of what it means to be a 'Superpower'. The United States could solve all the problems by pulling back the troops to the rural countryside, and then razing the entire Iraqi nation with a coordinated barrage of nuclear and/or chemical weapons in a genocidal act of such proportions as to make the Holocaust look like a mere preview. We could accomplish this within two hours at the minimum with ICBMs, and probably forty-eight hours at the maximum. Then we wouldn't have to worry about Shiite versus Sunni versus Al Qaeda versus Iran. Furthermore, our troops would be safe, for the most part (barring the fallout of course). And no one could stop us. No one nation on Earth has the ability to stop us. Even the entire world united against us couldn't prevent this from happening.

We'll never do this of course, because the political price alone would be too high to pay. And it would be the grand start of World War III, which we might not win because at that point I'd say Russia and China would have every reason to open up on us as well. And I don't know that I'd blame them for doing so.

I think Michael Kinsley is right, and that the surge hasn't worked. It's time to admit what victory we can, take our lumps, leave, and prepare for the world to be a harsher place. Bush failed to take the chances he was given, failed to listen to the right people at the right time, and now we have to pay the price. Bear in mind that we only pay this particular price, because the other of which I spoke of is too awful to comtemplate (although William Tecumseh Sherman probably would have advocated it).