This business of "withdrawing combat troops" and leaving others confuses. Indeed, it hardly makes sense. Are we to understand that the other troops, those  "non-combat troops," the American soldiers who will continue to engage in the tireless and endless little acts of kindness and of love -- Reconstruction, teaching Peace and Justice, taming various lions (Arab and Kurd, Shi'a and Sunni ) to lie down peacefully with other lions -- will remain, without those "combat troops" to defend them? And what of the American civilians seconded to various ministries, or the American and other Western contractors? How long do you think they will remain safe and sound, when this or that group of Muslims may find it in in their interest, at the moment, to discourage American involvement (of the type: if we can't get the role in the government we think we deserve, we will push out the Americans and their aid to that government), or, alternatively, calculate that by attacking those Americans who remain insufficiently defended, such acts may force the American troops to return in force, and that too, may fit in with some sectarian or ethnic group's calculation.

"Avoid entangling alliances" warned Washington. Not all alliances are "entangling" ones. Some are useful. But this business in Iraq, or any business in any Muslim land, where the best efforts of American soldiers and civilians are akin to that of Colonel Bogey building that bridge so dutifuly and beautifully over the River Kwai, losing sight that the bridge, when completed, would aid their enemies, the Japanese, is as entangling as all get out.

And that is why, you see, we should long ago have listened to those who for the right reasons --the better to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam by exploiting those pre-existing sectarian and ethnic divisions -- wanted us to...get out.