One more thought about the Krepinevich business. I believe Brooks went out of his way to slam Rumsfeld in his piece–even though Krepinevich says his approach can be done with fewer troops–partly because there is already intellectual positioning going on about where to put the blame for a failure in Iraq. Some conservatives will be very eager to blame failed implementation so they can preserve their belief that everyone the world over is really a liberal democrat. If only we had more troops, etc., etc., everything would have been fine. This line of analysis will tend to ignore all the difficult conditions we have faced in Iraq that had nothing to do with us, but with the nature of Iraq and Iraqis. You can just feel it coming…