The United States cannot withdraw completely without some arrangement, because that would leave Iran in an extremely powerful position in the region. The Iranian strategy seems to be to make the United States sufficiently uncomfortable to see withdrawal as attractive but not to be so threatening as to deter the withdrawal. As clever as that strategy is, however, it does not hide the fact that Iran would dominate the Persian Gulf region after the withdrawal. Thus, the United States has nothing but unpleasant choices in Iraq. It can stay in perpetuity and remain vulnerable to violence. It can withdraw and hand the region over to Iran. It can go to war with yet another Islamic country. Or it can negotiate with a government that it despises — and which despises it right back.
I don't get the dilemma. Of course we should maintain troops in Iraq for decades to come. I hope the Iraqis negotiate such a deal with us. Iraq knows they need us until they can build a conventional military to fight Iran, Syria, or Turkey, if need be. And they know they need our support to maintain peaceful political conflict over allocating internal power that doesn't dissolve into traditional violent methods. And they know they need our help to defeat remnant terrorists supported by outside Sunni Arabs and Iran.
Any casualties in Iraq will be scattered and dwarfed by Afghanistan campaign casualties. The American public won't notice such casualties to the degree to provoke a backlash. Did we notice the casualties in South Korea in the 1960s as the Vietnam War raged?
And we'll help cement our battlefield win over time. And in time, Iraq will become an accompanied tour for our troops and it will seem no more dangerous than Germany, Italy, Japan, or Belgium.
UPDATE: We are still needed:
An Al-Qaeda group on Friday claimed it was behind a suicide bombing on a crowded Iraqi army recruitment centre in Baghdad that killed 59 people in the deadliest attack this year, US monitors said.
Al Qaeda isn't a threat to the Iraq state, in their current strength, but it is a threat to individual lives.
