I'm running out of "other hands," as in "on the"

While it is certainly true that the "Domino Theory" didn't come to pass when we finally left Saigon, our departure did have consequences -- for the South Vietnamese. To ignore the consequences of our actions on the Iraqi people by either our staying or our going -- or rather, arguing that either of those actions is for the benefit of the Iraqi people -- is probably the most disgusting aspect of our current political discourse. George Packer throws some cold water on realism, whatever it's political stripe.

It is true that the presence of American troops is a source of great tension and violence in Iraq, and that overwhelming numbers of Iraqis want them to leave. But it is also true that wherever American troop levels have been reduced—in Falluja and Mosul in 2004, in Tal Afar in 2005, in Baghdad in 2006—security has deteriorated. In the absence of adequate and impartial Iraqi forces, Sunni insurgents or Shiite militias have filled the power vacuum with a reign of terror. An American withdrawal could produce the same result on a vast scale. That is why so many Iraqis, after expressing their ardent desire to see the last foreign troops leave their country, quickly add, “But not until they clean up the mess they made.” And it is why a public-service announcement scrolling across the bottom of the screen during a recent broadcast on an Iraqi network said, “The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians not comply with the orders of the Army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in that area.”

The argument that Iraq would be better off on its own is a self-serving illusion that seems to offer Americans a win-win solution to a lose-lose problem. Like so much about this war, it has more to do with politics here than reality there. Such wishful thinking (reminiscent of the sweets-and-flowers variety that preceded the war) would have pernicious consequences, as the United States fails to anticipate one disaster after another in the wake of its departure: ethnic cleansing on a large scale, refugees pouring across Iraq’s borders, incursions by neighboring armies, and the slaughter of Iraqis who had joined the American project.

With the Democrats about to take over Congress, the Iraq Study Group preparing to release its report, a team of military officers drafting new strategies at the Pentagon, and Rumsfeld heading into an ignominious retirement, the war has reached a moment of reckoning in Washington. Though it may well be too late, politically a new Iraq policy is finally possible. It should use every ounce of America’s vanishing leverage to get the Iraqi factions, including insurgent and militia leaders and their foreign backers, to sit together in a room, with all the vexing issues of political power and economic resources before them. The U.S. government should announce that decisions about troop levels, including withdrawal, would depend on, not precede, the success or failure of the effort. An official involved with the Democratic congressional leadership said last week that political compromise and a gradual lessening of violence could allow the U.S. to reduce its numbers over the next eighteen months to thirty thousand troops, with other countries, including Muslim ones, convinced that it’s in their interest to fill the gap with peacekeepers. If America is already heading for the exit, no one will want to have anything to do with Iraq except to pick at its carcass.

Yes, but.

Packer certainly knows the country better than I do, as well as the actors involved. But in many ways our "vanishing leverage" has already vanished. "Hope" is our strategy. Hope that if we just hold on for two or three more Friedman Units then something -- anything -- good will occur and will change the path this "country" is on. Similiarly, I'm baffled how "Muslim countries" will bring stability to a country in the midst of a civil war between...Muslims. Back in my younger days we didn't call such occupations "stability," we called them "proxy wars."

And, of course, it's all wishing for Ponies because there's this guy:

Ultimately, it’s up to the President. The man who still holds that office may not want a new policy.

Packer, surprisingly, gives the idiot too much credit. Our attention-deficited president never had an old policy, so contemplating a new one probably isn't something he'll be doing any time soon.