The Iraq war is going nowhere fast. To know this, all you have to do is listen to the people selling it, especially General Patraeus and George W. Bush. To them, our success can best be measured by the promise of cutting 30,000 troops by next summer, even though the military long ago told us that there was no way it could sustain the current level of soldiers any longer. Indeed, you go to war with the army you have. Success then, is returning to the way the war was previously prosecuted. 130,000 troops were woefully inadequate from 2003-2007, so let's try it again. That makes absolutely no sense. Does Bush think the country so stupid that it doesn't remember that he was forced to implement the surge in response to the chaos that resulted from his own failed policies? Consider the following exchange between Bush and Nancy Pelosi:

When top Democratic leaders visited him at the White House this week, President Bush told them he wanted to "find common ground" on Iraq. But when the president said he planned to "start doing some redeployment ," the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, cut him off.

"No you're not, Mr. President," Ms. Pelosi interjected. "You're just going back to the presurge level."

Tonight, the president will do his best to try and convince a television audience that this stale bread is "New and Improved!" but what's new about it, exactly? That we've now armed Sunni militias who have decided it's in their self-interest to rat out Al-Qaida? They still despise the Shia, and now they're better armed. Sounds promising.

If the surge has worked, as Bush and Patraeus insist, wouldn't it be more logical to keep surging? Instead, to build on whatever success we've seen in Anbar, we'll be removing troops. They aren't even following their own strained logic at this point. The real problem, of course, is that the surge hasn't done what we'd hoped. While it may have quelled pockets of violence, its larger objectives remain dramatically void. Today, in fact, we learned that the Iraqi Parliament's attempt at an oil-revenue deal has collapsed.

Well, Barack Obama, among others, has heard and seen enough. On the campaign trail yesterday, he detailed what he would and would not do if he were in charge:

Senator Barack Obama yesterday presented his most extensive plan yet for winding down the war in Iraq, proposing to withdraw all combat brigades by the end of the next year while leaving behind an unspecified smaller force to strike at terrorists, train Iraqi soldiers and protect American interests....

"What's at stake is bigger than this war: it's our global leadership," Mr. Obama said. "Now is a time to be bold. We must not stay the course or take the conventional path because the other course is unknown."

You can read the full speech here. While there are no easy choices in Iraq, this difficult one is certainly better than Mr. Bush's "Back to the Future" plan.