"...but may be the least worst choice available."

For WHOM?

US interests... Westernized Iraqis squatting in the so-called 'Green Zone', or the indigenous population?

Do Tell?

That's about as nasty as I'm gonna get, but needless to say, the Western media's (That unfortunately includes FP) Euro/US-centric chauvinism disgusts me with it's rationalizations, legitimizations, and perverse semantics.

WE ARE 'The Problem'.

Get out NOW, and it may take one hundred years to settle down to where an American might be able to set foot in Iraq again without being spat upon, but if we DON'T get out... Between this worthless war and the other one, Afghanistan, it WILL break the West, SPECIFICALLY the United States economically and militarily, leaving Americans essentially defenseless against the growing number of economic and armed enemies seeking revenge.

Although one MIGHT call it "Justice", unless one is on the receiving end of that justice with a 'deer in the headlights' look on their face like that of an innocent Baluchistani tribesman about to go up in a puff of pink mush due to 'incorrect targeting' by some 'good German' video-gamer cum drone operator sitting by his coffee cup in Grass Valley California.

The responsibility of American foreign policymakers is not to avoid bad choices, but rather to avoid the worst choices for us.

Those Americans most anxious about the possibility of genocide in Iraq -- presumably this means genocide perpetrated by the Shiite Arab majority against the Sunni Arab minority that led both the Iraqi insurgency and the campaign of mass casualty attacks on Shiite civilians going back to 2004 -- have accepted genocide elsewhere in this decade with equanimity. I have no doubt that urging acceptance of this risk, through withdrawal of the American army from Iraq, sounds very hard-hearted to people with an emotional commitment to our mission there. However, what we would really be doing is placing responsibility for avoiding the worst outcomes in Iraq on the people who live there, not on American servicemen.

If our resources were infinite, one could make a case for postponing this transfer. Our resources are not infinite, and avoiding that fact every time this subject is discussed will not change it. We can fight this problem, while offering ourselves empty congratulations on our having embraced nuance, ambiguity and half-made hard choices, or we can decide it. We decide it based on what is best for the United States.

Not finding the article at the moment, but somewhere in the last couple of years an astute commentator pointed out that everytime the 'tail'(sic) of the post-withdrawal 'genocide in Vietnam' 'dog' gets wagged, the discussion becomes Cambodian and Laotian genocidal acts.

The IS NO PROOF that any genocide occurred after the US left Vietnam. (although the case COULD be made that our presence in the region was a CAUSE of the Cambodian genocide)

It is a MYTH, right in there with alleged anti-war protestors 'spitting on returning soldiers'(cf. Jerry Lembke's "The Spitting Myth")

Yet those 'talking points' remain on the MSM's lips.

It will be a myth after the US UNILATERALLY withdraws from Iraq as well.

Leave now. It's what the average Iraqi AND American on the street wants RIGHT NOW. Do It!

With good reason.

The best reason: In a DEMOCRACY, the people tell their governments what to do... NOT the other way around.

America and Iraq are ostensibly Democracies... Right Tom?

Stop trying to convince us we're wrong... That's NOT a journalist's job.

Mr Ricks' point about puzzling out the 'least worst choice' is important, and as often ignored by the salesmen of continued occupation, as 'out-now' propponents.

What Ricks calls our "pre-emptive war launched on false premises" sounds dangerously close to a 'war of choice,' Especially if the 2,000 lb 'imminent mushroom cloud' gorilla turned out to be Libby and Ladeen dressed up in monkey suits. The exquisite deniability crafted into the '17 words' strongly suggest that the Jan 2003 intent was to deceive.

David Kay, most of our allies, and all of the Arab countries have long since adopted the view that this was a mistake, an American funded war of choice. In the hearts-minds battle for Arab cooperation, and in the law of war, choosing to wage an unnecesary war places entirely different burdens on the aggress... er, winner. I'm reminded of persistant questions about whether Team W may even have rejected a Saddam-in-exile offer, on the table for a few billions.

The important difference between preemption and choice reformulates the 'what are our options from here' equation. For one thing, we actually do have the option, some would say duty, to start with an apology for a lethally poor choice, to citizens of both our countries. Secondly (and paradoxically), because of our culpability in war-chaos that's killed a quarter million+ and displaced 4M, we don't have the moral or legal choice of walking away. Not yet.

So our least bad choice just might be to take the bitter cup of our victory, to ask the Iraqis and their refugee-burdened neighbors to accept a humble offer of restitution. Kinda like what the Baker ISG plan lined out. Put our diplomats, intel and army in service of a grand bargain, instead of what still amounts to a 'move along now, all's well in hand' cover-up. If the SOFA's end-of-2010 deadline is any guide, our opportunity to make good in Iraq is running out anyway.

Re the decades long Kurd-Arab civil war, and its strong connection to the 'false preemption' of 2003, I recommend this short backgrounder. A lot of Chalabi's bad dope was coming thru the KRG, where the Mossad had set up Barzani's intel apparatus. It's worth the read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish-Israeli_relations

I think we should follow Tony Robbins advice about what to do whenever anything bad happens and that is to ask the empowering question "What is good about this?"

Personally, I think the lessons learned during the Iraq War have been good for the U.S. military so all in all it's been a very big plus. Had we not had this war then in our next war we may have ended up eventually like the Prussians facing Napoleon - getting mowed down due to resting on our laurels. It's good that we've learned our lessons in Iraq rather than facing a much more fearsome opponent in the future without these lessons learned. I think the glass is more than half-filled from the Iraq War.

What should we do now?

My guess is we should install a benevolent dictator on the Iraqi people. Or if that's not possible then someone like the Shah of Iran once was.

Your accompanying photo is of British Army troops and equipment. Of course they were stuck for a while as well...

I can't pull up any poll numbers offhand, but I have a feeling the public supported the invasion of Iraq back in March 2003. Now, one of the commenters on this site seems to be saying that since public opinion supports a rapid exit, the government must get out. The point is, democracy doesn't mean mob rule, and if military decisions were made on such whims, we'd be in a real, real bad place.

History will look disapprovingly on the false pretenses that spawned the war in Iraq, but I feel it will damn America if we leave the country in shambles. Rationalize a withdrawal however you like, tell yourself America needs to deploy its resources elsewhere - it doesn't matter. We did this to Iraq, to dump the country now would be shameful. I'm saying this as someone who opposed the war.

In the Status of Forces Agreement the Iraqis already decided we are leaving by the end of 2011. Opinoin polls have repeatedly shown that the Iraqis don't like us and don't want us there and consider it legit to kill us. It seems to me that the only thing we have left to do is figure out the most orderly way to withdraw and how much we owe in reparations.

Are you and Joan Walsh suggesting that we should defy the Iraqi government and public opinion and stay forcibly?

On what grounds can you start an unjust war, have the victim ask you to leave, and then somehow justly continue the unjust war?

I think that Fadel article was taking things too literally. Every other week almost for months now since the summer of 2008 the Kurds and Baghdad trade charges against each other. The most common themes amongst the Kurds are that the Arabs are returning to their anti-Kurdish way, Maliki is becoming autocratic, things might turn out like Saddam, and nothing is being done about Kirkuk. Baghdad replies by saying that the Kurds are violating the constitution by signing their own oil deals, and that they are acting illegally by having de facto annexed northern portions of the country outside of Kurdistan. This is Iraq so violence is always a possibility, what seems more likely to me is that the Kurds will start pushing for independence. They simply can't achieve any of their goals, annexing Kirkuk and other northern regions, sign and export their own oil, gain greater autonomy, within the exiting political system. For a couple years after the invasion they had a strong alliance with the Supreme Council that always wanted an autonomous region in the south, but as the recent provincial elections show, the Supreme Council is on the way out and Maliki's stock is going up. For more see: musingsoniraq.blogspot.com