LONDON -- Landlubbers usually get maritime analogies wrong. "Changing course" is not cowardice; it's the sensible thing to do if the ship is headed for the rocks. "Cutting" (the anchor cable) "and running" (before the wind) is what you do when the storm is raging, the anchor is dragging, and the ship is being driven onto a lee shore.
And only very stupid rats do not leave a sinking ship.
About four years too late, the "masters of the universe" are having second thoughts about the wisdom of the whole misbegotten enterprise in Iraq. Washington swirls with leaks, like the secret report by Col. Pete Devlin, the U.S. Marine Corps chief of intelligence, that U.S. troops in Anbar province, the heartland of Sunni resistance, control nothing beyond their own bases, and that the Iraqi government has no functioning institutions in the province. And senior Republicans are seeking an exit strategy that will absolve their party from blame for the disaster that is today's Iraq.