The new flypaper

The old one was the Iraq war rationale which claimed that a war there would concentrate all the world's evildoers in one place. It was a crock. Andrew Sullivan is developing a new one --

So: one last face-saving effort [in Iraq], hoping for a miracle. Then: get the hell out. Perhaps six months redeployment to Kurdistan to protect the only secure haven left, before complete disengagement. Then use the Sunni-Shia regional war to divert Islamist terror away from the West and toward the Arab states that have enabled it.

Actually it's somewhere between flypaper and a Lord of the Rings analogy. But it's equally hubristic in its claim that a bloodbath can be effectively managed from a distance.