Bush won't have luxury of passing Iraq along

President Bush has told us that the question of whether to withdraw from Iraq is one that his successor will have to deal with — not him. I don't think so. Bush is not going to have that luxury of passing Iraq along. You see, the insurgency in Iraq is in its "last throes" — just like Dick Cheney said. Unfortunately, it's being replaced by anarchy in many neighborhoods — not democracy. And I don't believe the American people will put up with 2 1/2 more years of baby-sitting anarchy instead of midwifing democracy.

The report that U.S. Marines were involved in a massacre of Iraqis in Haditha — which the Pentagon needs to clarify fast — is a tragic reminder that a foreign occupation by U.S. forces can't go on for years. Most U.S. soldiers in Iraq have done heroic work, but occupations that drag on inevitably lead to Hadithas.

Right now we are paying for all the Bush team's missteps in Iraq: allowing looting after the fall of Baghdad, disbanding the Iraqi Army without an alternative security force or enough U.S. troops in place, fostering a culture of torture at Abu Ghraib and then letting the politics in Iraq drift for months without any outcome.

All of this created a security vacuum that has allowed a rogue's gallery of sectarian militias, death squads, gangs and al-Qaida operatives to mushroom in Basra, Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle. The end result: While the mainstream Iraqi Sunnis have now joined the government, in a major way, this has not brought more stability. Because between the sectarian militias now murdering each other's civilians, tit for tat, and al-Qaida just blowing up Iraqi civilians randomly, the new government can't get going. Too many Iraqis are paralyzed by fear.

Indeed, there has been a subtle but important change in the violence in Iraq. The main enemy in many places is no longer the Sunni insurgency. It is anarchy. Mini-wars of all against all. As the BBC reported Wednesday from Basra: Prime Minister Nuri Maliki "has declared a monthlong state of emergency in Basra, which has been plagued by sectarian clashes, anarchy and factional rivalry." That's what happens in a security vacuum.

Once this kind of militia madness takes root, it's very hard to uproot. U.S. troops can't do it, because it would require searching homes, neighborhood by neighborhood. Only a cohesive Iraqi national army could do that. And that can only be the product of a real national unity government, in which all parties feel they have a fair share of the pie and are committed to investing in an Iraqi army — not their own militia.