The Iraqi nightmare: What to do, when to get out

Two must-reads:

At Slate (see here), Fred Kaplan offers a plan to get out of Iraq by 2007:

The withdrawal clock can't -- and shouldn't -- start ticking until after this December's election, when the Iraqis vote for a new government. (They voted in January for an interim government, which would draft a constitution. The constitution is supposed to be completed in August and ratified in October. This is another reason for Rumsfeld's agitation: Fundamental differences among Iraq's religious factions are threatening to push back the deadline, which would push back the next elections, which would delay—for who knows how long—the U.S. withdrawal.)

At that point, it may take another 18 months for the Iraqi security forces to be equipped and trained -- assuming that, this time, the new government cooperates. So, under this scenario, the United States can start pulling out of Iraq, as Gen. Casey projected, by the spring or summer of 2006 -- and be out entirely by mid-2007.

This schedule would fit well with Republican election plans -- and it's unlikely the Democrats would strenuously oppose the plan. (Do they want to bill themselves as the party in favor of prolonging the war?) It also has the virtue of being a good idea. If the Iraqi assembly hammers out a constitution, if the elections take place, if Sunnis take part and win a proportionate share of seats, then enough citizens may be sufficiently satisfied with the arrangement to undermine the insurgents' base of support and legitimacy -- which is the key to all successful insurgencies.

And if none of these things happen, it will be time to ask whether the American troops in Iraq are serving any purpose, whether it makes any difference if they're back here or over there -- and, if it makes no difference, to ask why they can't just come home.

In the Post (see here), David Ignatius argues that Iraq will survive, though there are signs that the country has already descended into civil war:

A useful rule about Iraq is that things are never as good as they seem in the up times, nor as bad as they seem in the down times. That said, things do look pretty darn bad right now, and U.S. officials need to ponder whether their strategy for stabilizing the country is really working.

Pessimists increasingly argue that Iraq may be going the way of Lebanon in the 1970s. I hope that isn't so, and that Iraq avoids civil war. But people should realize that even Lebanonization wouldn't be the end of the story. The Lebanese turned to sectarian militias when their army and police couldn't provide security. But through more than 15 years of civil war, Lebanon continued to have a president, a prime minister, a parliament and an army. The country was on ice, in effect, while the sectarian battles raged. The national identity survived, and it came roaring back this spring in the Cedar Revolution that drove out Syrian troops.

What happens in Iraq will depend on Iraqi decisions. One of those is whether the Iraqi people continue to want U.S. help in rebuilding their country. For now, America's job is to keep training an Iraqi army and keep supporting an Iraqi government -- even when those institutions sometimes seem to be illusions. Iraq is in torment, but the Lebanon example suggests that with patient help, its institutions can survive this nightmare.

I would only repeat what I have said here before: The U.S. must finish the job it started and must push forward with a more effective plan to build the new Iraq. However, I suspect that domestic political considerations leading up to 2006 will prompt Bush to withdraw a significant number of American troops (and to lessen America's presence substantially) before that job is done.