
And now, they no longer need worry about that issue, because Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has come to the rescue like John Wayne galloping in on horseback.

No ‘cut and run’ in this, just a recognition of the sovereignty of a duly elected government to cut it’s own throat. I’m not sure if the order applies to entry points to the Green Zone Maliki dares not leave, but the orderly withdrawal of the American and coalition military is on the table if we have the sense to accept it.
The result of our leaving
- Will finally enable us to call the civil war that engulfs Iraq--a Civil War.
- Assures the Iraq we hoped to turn into an Arabic democracy will lie in ruins (if a more ruined condition than now exists there is possible).
- Exacerbates the ‘ethnic cleansing’ (the politically correct word for genocide) of Sunni Muslims whenever and wherever they can be found.
- Will hurry the Kurds to close off and declare independent their part of the country.
- Assures that Moqtada al-Sadr will lead his militia, the Mahdi Army, against the various warlord militias of Iraq and the outcome (whichever side wins) will be another Middle Eastern theocracy.
- Will, for once and for all, showcase the democratically elected parliament in Iraq as being an emperor with no clothes and an enforced political entity that the nation and the Arab world in general is decades from actually attaining.

The Prime Minister's’s National Reconciliation Plan, some five months old now, entailed
- A timetable for withdrawal of occupation troops from Iraq.
- Amnesty for all insurgents who attacked U.S. and Iraqi military targets.
- Release of all security detainees from U.S. and Iraqi prisons.
- Compensation for victims of coalition military operations.

According to a NewsWeek article,
The distinction between insurgents and terrorists is one of the key principles in the document, and is in response to Sunni politicians' demands that the "national resistance" should not be punished for what they see as legitimate self-defense in attacks against a foreign occupying power. Principle No. 19 calls for "Recognizing the legitimacy of the national resistance and differentiating or separating it from terrorism" while "encouraging the national resistance to enroll in the political process and recognizing the necessity of the participation of the national resistance in the national reconciliation dialogue."The elected Iraqi government is probably too weak to stand, but additional time in this political impasse won't make it stronger. Malaki, desperate to keep the various factions within his fragile government talking to one another and equally anxious to keep his post as Prime Minister, wants us gone. The Iraqi majority want us gone. The American majority want us gone.
Another opportunity to be ‘asked’ to leave may be a long time coming. The result will be the same, stay or leave, except for the continued sacrifice of American troops and Iraqi citizens. The errors of this war were many and might have played out differently had a better understanding of Muslim culture informed our strategic and tactical decisions. They did not.
Time to accept the demand of the legitimately elected Iraqi government, while there still is a government, and get the hell out.
___________________________________________________
Media positions on the Malaki demand;