When it comes to the Iraq war, the question is no longer whether the U.S. should end it, but how.  On yesterday's Meet the Bloggers, special guest Darcy Burner made the case for A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, which she co-authored earlier this year.  This plan calls for the removal of U.S. troops rapidly and safely, while increasing diplomacy and foreign aid to rebuild Iraq. 

According the Burner, we're already beginning to see the Responsible Plan in action.  Any recent "success" in Iraq is NOT due to the military surge, despite what the Bush adminstration, John McCain, and the corporate media would have us believe.  Rather, the progress we've made in Iraq is due to new diplomatic, economic, and political efforts to foster stability.  What's more, the recent attempts by Congress to reform our interrogation policies, to hold private contractors in Iraq accountable, and to create the GI Bill for the 21st Century were all specifics initially recommended by the Responsible Plan, not to mention calls for a troop withdrawal timetable. 

But ending the Iraq war is only part of the Responsible Plan.  The show's panel of bloggers David Goldstein (HorsesAss.org), Joan McCarter (Daily Kos), and Matt Stoller (Open Left) pointed out that we must also repair the structural problems that led us into Iraq in the first place.  Failures across the board, from our branches of government to our media, must be fixed in order to prevent a quagmire like this from happening again.  Stoller suggested a crucial first step would be for the Bush administration to admit this war was all for oil, and that we cannot be intimidated by right-wing media, Big Oil executives, and conservatives who attempt to smear us for connecting Iraq with oil and our economy.