Defeatism

Hilzoy has a very good post up over at Obsidian Wings. He takes on one of his fellow Wingers who comments thusly:

"Noted, that the lefties in this thread and in my most recent post think Iraq is a lost cause. In my view, it's only lost if we lose our political will to prevail. That should've been a prime lesson learned from Vietnam. Sadly, it looks like that lesson didn't take here."

It's the return of the Dolchstoβlegende, although Hilzoy is too polite to tell this to his co-blogger's face. Hilzoy takes a few hundred words to kindly, gently and in a roundabout way, eh, basically pound the other's argument to rubble. Let me try to do it in 20 words:

Sure, you can only lose if you decide to quit. But you can only win if you have a plan for winning.

What's the plan? How is the US going to make the insurgents stop? What's going to make them lose their political will to prevail? Staying the course just doesn't seem to cut it.