Iraq: It's winnable negotiable!

Bush may have refused to negotiate with himself over Social Security, but his administration is gaining considerable flexibility about negotiating with the bad guys in Iraq -- at least, the bad guys who fall within the good end of the bad guy spectrum.

"Would that we could simply kill all our enemies in Iraq in a neat black-and-white battle. Alas, we can’t," sighs Rich Lowry, the apparently sadder but wiser National Review editor who now understands that there are indeed shades of gray in the world.

So suck it up, Neo-Manicheans:

If we are to prevail against the Sunni insurgency, success will look like our victory over Sadr — a messy, imperfect amalgam of military pressure and negotiations, ending with some of the bad guys getting positions in Iraq’s government.

Rest assured that this approach applies only to "bad guys," "contemptible thugs," and "the insurgency's more reasonable fringes." It does not apply to "the foreign jihadists [who] are truly irredeemable." At least, not until the Bush people realize that a few more shades of gray could come in handy.