Good Points

In today's Washington Post U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) makes a compelling case for developing a plan to get out of Iraq: It will force various Iraqi political factions to work together to preserve stability.

There is, however, one point on which leaders of the three main groups in Iraq agree: None of the Iraqi groups wants U.S. troops to leave precipitately. The Shiites want us to stay until Iraqi security forces are strong enough to deal with the insurgency on their own. The Kurds want us to remain for the impending future. And the Sunni Arab leaders want us to stay as a deterrent to those who might seek revenge against them for the actions of Saddam Hussein.

We must use that leverage -- the possibility of an American withdrawal -- to achieve the broad-based political settlement that is essential for defeating the insurgency.

[snip]

The administration has been sending the opposite messages with repeated statements that we will stay in Iraq as long as we are needed. We should not mislead the Iraqis into thinking they have unlimited time to reach a settlement. As long as they think that way, they are less likely to make the necessary compromises.

Also in today's Post, Sebastian Mallaby makes the case that environmentalists have a moral and political obligation to reduce the harm of environmental regulations that do more harm than good. In particular, he criticizes environmental groups for refusing to budge on the ban on DDT, a ban which indisputably continues to kill millions of people.

DDT also helped to eliminate malaria in Europe and parts of Asia, and in 1970 the National Academy of Sciences estimated that the chemical had prevented 500 million deaths. And yet, despite that astounding number, DDT has all but disappeared from the malaria arsenal. Some 500 million people still get the disease annually, and at least 1 million die, but the World Health Organization refuses to recommend DDT spraying.

[snip]

So the sin of the environmental movement -- at least of its more responsible exponents -- is not that it's flat wrong on this issue. Instead, it is more subtle. Environmentalists think it's their responsibility to campaign against the damage done by toxic substances, but not to campaign against the damage done by the over-regulation of substances that actually aren't very toxic. Of course, the environmentalists' credibility in calling for necessary regulation would be enhanced if they were willing to denounce unnecessary regulation.

Mallaby (wrongly in my opinion) goes on to criticize the Bush Administration for "ignoring the science" on global warming.