Cut Your Losses, Save Your Legacy

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But once again, historians cheered. Although famed for his strong convictions, Truman changed his goals in response to changed circumstances. So did Ronald Reagan, another President whom Bush admires. In 1983, Reagan sent 2,000 Marines to try to end Lebanon's civil war. That October, suicide bombers truck-bombed their headquarters, killing more than 230. Reagan vowed that the U.S. would not be driven out, declaring the Marines' presence "central to our credibility on a global scale." But four months later, the Marines were gone, withdrawn from a mission they could not possibly achieve. Reagan loathed terrorism, just as Truman loathed communism. But each man recognized that there were limits to what the U.S. could do about it.

Those limits should be blindingly clear today as an exhausted American military tries to stitch Iraq back together, in a country and a region where the only thing Sunnis and Shi'ites agree upon is that they hate us. Bush seems to think historians reward Presidents who never give up hope. And when that hope is justified by the facts, they do. But sometimes they reward Presidents for abandoning their hopes so they don't become obsessions. The best thing Bush can do for his legacy is to stop trying to change it. The more he accepts that history's die is already cast, the more merciful history will be. •

Beinart is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations