Is the horse weak or strong?

It is now all but orthodox to say that Britain must get out of Iraq sooner rather than later. Irrespective of its constitutional propriety, the declaration by General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, that we should withdraw ‘some time soon’ has been widely welcomed as a much-needed blast of honesty. On the other side of the Atlantic, meanwhile, the Iraq Study Group, chaired by James Baker, the former US secretary of state, is expected to recommend a dramatic change in strategy, amounting, at the very least, to a phased withdrawal.

With Tony Blair on his way out, and President Bush in the political doldrums of his second and final term, there is a gathering consensus that enough is enough, and that it is time to contrive a Nixonian ‘peace with honour’. But this is to confuse the twilight of the Bush–Blair era with the position the West has reached in Iraq; they are not the same thing.