Pete and Jen, you’re both right that Obama’s preposterous position — that the surge has worked and that he was right to oppose it in the first place — ought to induce cringes in everyone who hears it. The problem is that in taking this view, Obama is a perfect reflection of the vast majority of America’s thinking and chattering classes, who are in a reinforcing, Rube Goldberg, thought-loop that goes like this:

The war was for WMD, and there were no WMD, and the administration lied, and was incompetent, and didn’t force the Iraqis to step up to the plate, and relied too much on the Iraqi military rather than on our own, and provoked a civil war, and drew Al Qaeda into Iraq, and refuses to fight Al Qaeda, and got too many Americans killed, and had too few troops, and have too many troops, and decided on a ruinous surge, and created a puppet in Maliki, and must listen to Maliki when he says we should get out, and we can get out because things are better, but the surge was still wrong, because the war was for WMD, and there were no WMD…

You want to know why Obama will pay little price for the absurdity of his position? Because he is the front man of all front men —  he is giving cover to the American intellectual aristocracy. They agree with him because they cannot accept that there is a very simple argument for them to adopt: The war was wrong, but it will be a very good thing if we win. And they can’t because, deep down, they don’t think it will be a good thing for us to win. They don’t think the war is being fought by “us.” It’s being fought by Bush, and the best way for Bush to be punished is for Iraq to end in disaster.