Stay the course for now?

Matt Yglesias has some thoughtful comments on Kevin Drum’s fish or cut bait line. Essentially, he thinks that we should wait for the elections and then reevaluate from there; considering that the dynamics could change somewhat at that time, this sounds pretty reasonable to me.

However, given what is going on in Iraq right now, the word that parties doing well are leading on a “Get rid of the US” message, and that UN elections inspectors are going to be taking a hard look at the process from afar since it is too dangerous on the ground, I imagine all that waiting a month or two will give us is more fuel for the fire.

Of course, we might not even get to those elections this month after all:

The steady violence in Iraq, which also claimed the lives of four American soldiers and a marine, prompted Iraq's interim president, Ghazi al-Yawar, to urge the United Nations to look into whether Iraq should go ahead with elections scheduled for Jan. 30.

"The United Nations, as an independent umbrella of legitimacy, should really take the responsibility by seeing whether that is possible or not," Mr. al-Yawar, a Sunni Arab sheik, said in an interview with Reuters. "On a logical basis, there are signs that it will be a tough call to hold the election."

Of course, the possibility of that is small... the administration has too much invested in that date:

Despite Mr. Yawar's new misgivings, that message was reiterated in Washington and throughout the Bush administration today.

The chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said that on Monday President Bush and Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, had discussed the importance of the elections taking place as scheduled and that there had been "no discussion of delaying the election."

And why should they with brilliance like this?

A senior State Department official in Iraq, who spoke to reporters in Washington via a Pentagon hookup, echoed that message. "I think absolutely the elections are going to be held on Jan. 30," the official said this afternoon, speaking on condition of anonymity under rules for what is termed a "background briefing."

"I don't think there's any question out here in Iraq. And frankly, I don't think the security situation is deteriorating. I think the security situation is actually a little better than it was, say, six weeks ago" and that in "most of Iraq, the situation is not that bad, frankly."

Ummmm, OK. Of course there was one ancedote of hope:

"It's true that they don't want us to take part in the elections," a 26-year-old man wounded by the blast near the Interior Ministry office said, "but I am telling you that I am now more committed to go to the electoral centers and vote."

It's kinda like golf... even though your game sucks hard, you can always find that one shot that will make you come back to the course with false pretenses of hope.

And it's not like I wish the Iraqi's ill... like a GYWO cartoon I recently saw said, what I want for Christmas is to be wrong about all this. It's just that I don't think I will be...