Via Juan Cole, here's Georgie Anne Geyer on the increasingly desperate situation we appear to be facing in Iraq:

On the eve of World War II, the French depended confidently upon their huge and famous Maginot Line. Its enormous defensive fortresses, created almost as a necklace of cities in themselves, lined the entire border between France and Germany -- this time, the Germans would never pass!

But all the Germans had to do was to march around through Belgium to invade France. By May 1940, the vaunted Maginot Line was pitifully useless against such innovative resolve.

Today in Iraq, American officials are having to face their own verbal and rhetorical Maginot Lines. Our "answer" has been that we can get out when Iraqi forces are trained, when elections are held, and when Iraqis themselves win back the country from the "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "guerrillas" (or whatever we finally determine they are).

But in only the last two weeks, American generals and civilian officials are, in fact, admitting that they have their own similar Maginot Line problems. In Mosul, the Iraqi police force has "faded away." American generals speak of a "virtual connectivity" of the insurgents never seen before, as they use the Internet to pass along techniques, tactics and advice to one another. American generals now admit that almost all of them are Iraqis; we have created the Iraqi terrorists who were not there before . . . .

The truth no one really wants to deal with is that this war could very easily be lost by the United States. All the insurgents have to do is hang on another year. All we have to do is what the French and the British did in their colonies: Let themselves be exhausted and finally destroyed by their hubris, their delusions and their arrogant lack of understanding of the local people.

Our Maginot Lines today are our satellites, our huge bombers, our willingness to destroy a city such as Fallujah without even knowing who's there. Our Maginot minds refuse to see that the Germans sneaking around the French through Belgium to destroy them is disturbingly analogous to the insurgents in Iraq moving in cells from city to city and letting us think we are "winning."

Geez. What's wrong with Georgie Anne? Hasn't she heard about the soccer fields? And the schools . . . ?

POSTSCRIPT: As regular readers know, I (kinda sorta) supported this unremittingly awful clusterschtup, so it gives me absolutely no pleasure to link to pieces like the one above. Unfortunately, though, it seems clearer by the day that the pessimists realists like Ms. Geyer are right: we're in real danger of losing this war, and better leadership -- rather than better PR -- is our only chance of turning things around in time. Assuming, of course, that there still is time . . . .

UPDATE: It's funny. I was just reading this post over, and realized how much the terms of the debate have changed in the last year or so. Because, when I used the phrase "turning things around," it's not like I was referring to, you know, actually winning. I just meant managing to get out of there with a relatively whole skin.

And to think they used to call the Carter era the Age of Diminishing Expectations.