Defeat Without Disaster

The least bad plan for leaving Iraq.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, July 27, 2007, at 2:45 PM ET

Peter Galbraith's article in the current New York Review of Books, "Iraq: The Way to Go," is one of the most bracing essays written on the subject lately—a provocative but logical case for a U.S. withdrawal (though not a total withdrawal) that still manages to achieve a few of the war's original goals.

I don't agree with every plank of Galbraith's proposal (more on that later), but anyone seeking a solution to this disaster needs at least to contend with his arguments.