MoveOn’s misguided attack on General Patraeus raises the specter of time-warping back to another post-conflict culture war, something the US can ill-afford right now. Whether Sunnis and Shiites can reconcile or not, it is time that the Iraq War hawks and doves reconcile and truly move on to something more productive.

Now that the anti-war partisans have been vindicated by the course of events, it’s up to them to lead us out of the war. While there doesn’t seem to be any pleasant military exit, I do think there is an important political option: to forgive those who led us into the war.

While I personally hold out for the possibility of some acceptable outcome in Iraq, we must also prepare for the possibility of defeat. The problem for America is that defeat is so hard to accept. This isn’t about sportsmanship: there’s no hand to shake or person to whom we can say, “Good game.” If, as it increasingly appears likely, Iraq slides into a bloody and nasty civil war, shame and guilt will hang around our necks. How can we lift our heads after such ignominy?

It will not be easy, and we as Americans deserve a period during which we bow our heads in reflection. But rather than point fingers at each other and pin fault, we must show contrition at our own fallibility and forgiveness of others’.

We must turn to our neighbors who favored the war and acknowledge, “You did so with the best of intentions.”

We must face our Senators and Congressmen and say, “You voted as you did out of concern for our lives, and not just our lives, but the lives of others.”

We must look even to President Bush and say, “You sought to free a people from tyranny and injustice, and those were noble aims. You sought to protect your people, and for that we give thanks.”

And we must then look at all of mankind and say, “Alas, in a broken world even the best intentions go awry. In our naive optimism we knew not what we did. Not all can be foreseen, nor should hope always bow to reality. But in this turn of the wheel, fortune was not with us.”

It is too late to declare the war a mistake. Revisiting the past will not reassemble the broken pottery. Perhaps our enemies will not afford us this luxury, but can we not at least give each other the benefit of the doubt? Good intentions will not resurrect those whom our intentions caused death and misery. But forgiving ourselves for believing in the sheer power of our good intentions would, perhaps, put us on a path of atonement.

For all his chest-beating machismo, when the chips are down George W. Bush shows that he ain’t no commander-in-chief. Good riddance to that notion.

But without a President with a plan, no civilian is overseeing the military. Regardless of whether people believe Petraeus is presenting an honest assessment or not, since when does the military set national policy? The military achieves goals set by the President and Congress. The alternative would be like asking your contractor to design your new kitchen.

Since the collapses of his various justifications for war, Bush has had no coherent achievable goals, nor reasonable fallback positions from the ideal outcome. If a democratic Iraq is not possible, what’s Plan B? A stable, authoritarian Iraq? A raging civil war?

Petraeus’ testimony only informs us about what’s happened so far and some assessment of what’s possible. No one — not Bush, not the Presidential candidates from either party — have suggested any real goals for what we should be trying to accomplish in Iraq. Avoiding goals means you can’t fail, but you also can’t succeed.