EDITORIAL - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki spoke out on Saturday by saying that the United States can leave at any time and that Iraqi forces can take care of themselves. However, at the same time, the PM remarked that they still need extra training and weapons to be capable. So, which is it?

Al-Maliki has a bit of a history with “open mouth, insert foot” statements that have sprung from his pride and arrogance, which hang prominently around his neck like a large albatross that he might just pass on to the Iraqi government and the people. We know, especially after this preliminary report on the war, that we still have a lot of work to do. We know that the Iraqi government has made very few strides to become an independent sovereignty, but why is that?

To editorialize, I believe we're being milked for all we'll give. We're between a rock and a hard place in Iraq right now. Our rock is dealing with al Qaeda and keeping terrorism at bay, and our hard place is a corrupt and complacent Iraqi government that will take unwaveringly from the United States without making any progress to become self-sufficient, which is our goal. We have to figure out how to beat back the Jihadists so that they don't overtake the fledgling democracy, but we also have to make said democracy become self-sufficient, effectively weaning them off of American aide, like a baby from a bottle.

To do this, we cannot publicly set a date for withdrawal, as this only turns the war into a waiting game for the Islamists to take over, although a private deadline set by the Pentagon that isn't released beyond the top commanders may be a good idea. That would give us a timetable to work with, but would also allow us to extend the stay if needed should troubles arise before we execute the plan to move out.

However, we need to have established goals for the government to achieve within the boundaries of a timetable. Yes, you read correctly that I am agreeing with Speaker Pelosi -- kind of. I didn't agree with the techniques she used for setting arbitrary deadlines, and for several reasons. The first is timing: a war supplemental is not the legislation to play politics with; she stalled important business that needed to pass for the sake of our troops in harm's way. I find that detestable. Second, she tried to force it through the House by stuffing the bill with more pork than could ever fit in a barrel. Trying to use a desperately-needed funding bill to clog the lines of Congressmen for their districts in order to pass your own agenda is morally repugnant. And third, as stated above, a public pull-out date turns into a terrorist waiting game.

This is an unconventional foe in an unconventional war; we can't play conventionally and expect to make progress. We are not fighting a nation. There are no rules of engagement. These people haven't signed the Geneva Convention, and they are not an established military. They don't play fair, and we can't expect them to. We can't treat them like a legitimate military, and we can't give them the same rights. Do they have human rights? Of course—I don't support any form of torture at all, but we can't give them the same legal rights as we would regular POWs because they don't have a government behind them, only a radical group of imams that will not stop until western civilization as we know it is utterly demolished.


However, doing such things and accomplishing such goals is stifled easily by a debauched government that is anti-progressive toward any form of independence. They refuse to pull themselves together, and can't even work out a distribution of oil revenue! How can we expect them to do anything further if they can't solve something so trivial? Simply put, we can't. That may, regrettably, leave us with no other choice than to withdraw from Iraq and let al Qaeda chew on the government for a while before they decide they need our help and maybe, just maybe, they'll be serious the second time around -- that is, if there isn't a coup d'état that turns Iraq into an Islamic Republic. Of course, then the worry is that it would only serve as a puppet government for Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who funds terror groups like al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas, not to mention his nuclear refining work and numerous death chants against the United States and Israel.

I certainly have to hope that the Iraqi government will either set al-Maliki straight or vote him out of office. If they don't, and he remains to voice such grandiose claims, we may have no choice but to leave them alone, which could prove to be a major problem, not only for Iraqis, but for the entire world.