NEW YORK -- President George Bush should heed the wise old New York garment district maxim: "First loss, best loss."
Translated from New Yorkese, this means when you get into a bad deal, bail out fast. The longer you stay in and refuse to face reality, the more you will end up losing.
That, alas, is just what Bush is doing in Iraq. Better he had gone to the garment district for hard advice instead of the regal photo op in London thrown for him by Queen Elizabeth and her dysfunctional family.
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"We just can't cut and run," said Bush in London, trying to sound Churchillian. Why not? The best way to get the U.S. out of this quagmire is to follow France's sage advice: bring in a UN-run government as a fig leaf, declare victory, and pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, chaos will ensue. But Iraq and Afghanistan are in chaos now, and terrorism, as we saw in Istanbul last week, still rages.
Immediate retreat saves $100 billion-plus. Iraq and Afghanistan are not worth the lives of one more American or Canadian soldier, nor more wear on overstretched U.S. forces. Withdrawal will damp down raging anti-Americanism around the globe.
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_nov23.html