"Have Your Baghdad Civil War Without Us"

What is the difference between a serious commentator and an unserious one?

Answer:  Occasionally, the serious commentator can be detected in an original thought.  That is why Charles Krauthammer is a serious commentator.

He asks: What’s the point of the “surge?”  The problem is that is does nothing to make the Maliki government get serious about the Shiite militias.  Right now it is protecting the militias and the Iranians.

So let’s do something that really does threaten the Maliki regime.

We say to Maliki: you let us down and we dismantle the Green Zone, leave Baghdad, and let you fend for yourself; we keep the airport and certain strategic bases in the area; we redeploy most of our forces to Kurdistan; we maintain a significant presence in Anbar province where we are having success in our one-front war against al Qaeda and the Baathists. Then we watch. You can have your Baghdad civil war without us. We will be around to pick up the pieces as best we can.

A redeployment like that would reduce US casualties, maybe to zero, but would still maintain US military presence.

Back to the bottom line.  It is embarrassing to Bush and the US that we haven’t built a democracy in Iraq.  But it is only an embarrassment.

The bottom line is that US strategy requires that Iran doesn’t get to be the hegemon of the Middle East.  In that effort Iraq is just a useful pawn. 

Meanwhile, the Iran economy is in the toilet.