The Associated Press reported yesterday that Barack Obama is calling for immediate though gradual withdrawal of all troops from Iraq, in a process that consensus estimates will take about a year.

Right call.

This is a matter of logic as well as of ethics as well as of survival.

Logic first: Our removing ourselves from Iraq is inevitable, since we are not going to stay there forever. The process of withdrawal is difficult and time-consuming, as every orderly movement of thousands of troops always is. Therefore, the time to start is now; postponing it will not make it any easier.

Ethics next: Even among politicians who support the war, the consensus is that a political establishment in Iraq is not being built along lines envisioned by the White House. Extending the presence of Americans inside Iraq does not serve the purpose of cementing that central government acceptable to the White House, whose business it wasn't to decide what govt the Iraqis could have in the first place. So keeping our soldiers and contractors inside Iraq is, as Congressman Ron Paul rightly pointed out, a matter of jeopardizing life and limb -- their life and limb -- for the sake of saving face.

And on that little matter of survival: One purpose unquestionably served by the presence of an occupying army, any occupying army, is to inflame the populace. This is exactly the consequence foreseeable for any country in the world: you invade, they resist. The cause-and-effect is a luminously simple one, and it is impossible that every single member of this administration does not know it. So basically their foreign policy consists of spraying gasoline on flames around the world, inspiring guerrilla actions to justify a bogus 'war on terror' that they themselves have done much to foment. It is essential to our survival as well as to our national integrity to put a stop to it.

Predictably, any move by the general population of the United States to improve matters will be blocked, as well as possible, by GOP top-cruster types. See for example the comments by Republican nominee Mitt Romney published yesterday:

''I think Barack Obama has disqualified himself for presidential leadership,'' Romney said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. ''If we take the kind of left turn represented by Barack Obama and his flee-in-the-face-of-success strategy, we'd be in a very different position as a nation.''

Let's charitably assume that Gov. Romney sincerely considers not invading another country to be 'left.' So be it.

But any claim that the Bush-Cheney invasion and occupation of Iraq represents a 'success' has to be denied, as most Americans know; look at the public opinion surveys. That whole GOP-neocon campaign to represent withdrawing from Iraq as either 'loss' or 'failure' has to be shut down: the real loss was invading in the first place.

The failure was going in.