Warning Order

Well, President Obama announced our troops will be home from Iraq for the holidays.

Well, it isn't perhaps the best idea to say the troops will be home by Christmas. That implies the war is over. It isn't.

I can't say whether we did enough to get a "yes" from the Iraqis. I can say that absent an agreement on immunity for our troops in Iraq to keep them from being arrested and tried as a way to exert pressure on us, we could not stay.

And I can say that we need to stay to secure what we have gained. Now we have to figure out how to defend our gains (an allied Iraq on the road to establishing enduring democracy) without American troops on the ground. If we didn't have Iran as an enemy, this wouldn't be as important. But Iran is our enemy. So that's the way it is.

Perhaps this is a warning to our friends in Iraq that they have to mobilize efforts to keep American troops on the ground or face Iran's intrigues without our presence. We have time until the end of the year. And even if our troops leave by then without a new agreement, we will have the chance to come to a new agreement that sends American forces back into Iraq for training and deterrence, and to support Iraq as it hunts down Sadrists, al Qaeda, and Baathist remnants. Iraq needs us.That's why our foes want us out so badly. Can our friends rally to resist these bad elements?

Maybe our last troops leaving Iraq can be configured as a post-New Dawn design and linger a bit longer in Kuwait before embarking for home, just in case.