Bill Kristol knows that the current strategy in Iraq will not work as it was designed to do. He's not crazy. The chances of national reconciliation in Iraq have gone backward, not forward, this past year, and the U.S.'s empowerment of anti-Shiite propaganda in Anbar will only isolate Maliki further. The best that can happen is an indefinite occupation of a dismembered Iraq to slow down genocide and make ethnic cleansing more orderly. But even that is a very risky proposition. And the events of last week mean that the Republican party now owns the Iraq occupation more exclusively and deeply than they ever had - and indeed intend to maintain it for another decade.

So what to do? Remember that Kristol's loyalty to the Republicans often trumps national security. How else to explain his support for the GOP last November, even though a Republican victory would have prevented the surge in the first place and kept Rumsfeld in the Pentagon? One option: Change the subject by launching wars against Syria and Iran, and so polarize the country that the choice is framed as: MoveOn or America? That's much better than having, you know, an actual debate about the merits of the war in Iraq and the war against Islamist terror. On that, Republicans lose. If the war is far wider and more terrifying, if the enemies can be multiplied and amplified, then the dynamic plays to the advantage of the GOP. It's for us or against us again.