From CommonDreams
By H.D.S. Greenway

I used to believe that, no matter what one thought of the war, Americans had to stay to keep Iraq from disintegration and civil war. If I thought the United States could prevent either, I would say stay the course. But I believe now that we no longer control events in Iraq and that in the end we cannot hold the country together.

Nor can we prevent civil war, which is already gathering in the shadows, as evidenced by bombed mosques, secret torture chambers, and the victims of death squads found in the desert. Only the Iraqis themselves can come up with the necessary compromises and accommodations to keep Iraq whole.

I now believe, as former defense secretary Melvin Laird recently wrote: ”Our presence is what feeds the insurgency, and our gradual withdrawal would feed the confidence and the ability of average Iraqis to stand up to the insurgency.”

Perhaps there was a chance right after Baghdad fell that things might turn out otherwise, but a combination of incompetence and ideology-driven blunders has lost that chance. America’s reputation for torture has also hurt our efforts.

The Iraqi state is a Humpty Dumpty that is beyond the ability of the United States to put together again. Only Iraqis can do that, and the presence of American forces may actually be a disincentive to ethnic and sectarian compromise.

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