3 June Washington Post commentary - The 'Blame The Iraqis' Gambit by Robert Kagan.

When people want to justify the unjustifiable and accept the unacceptable, they try all kinds of ways to make themselves feel better about their decision. For those who want to pull out of Iraq, there is a whole panoply of excuses:

"Bush lied us into war" is the favorite of many Democrats, including presidential candidates who supported the war but now want to claim they were misled. "Bush screwed up the war" is the favorite of people such as me and others who argued from the beginning for more troops and a different military strategy and were told to shut up by folks in the Pentagon and the White House.

Both of these excuses have the same problem. No matter why we went into Iraq and no matter how badly we have fought the war up until recently, this tells us nothing about what to do now. It doesn't make withdrawal any less costly. It doesn't make an implosion in Iraq and a victory for al-Qaeda any more tolerable.

The same is true for what has now become the most powerful and pervasive excuse for pulling out of Iraq: "It's the Iraqis' fault."...