The Surge has prevented civil war, but the situation is delicate. Any formal withdrawal from Iraq would have to deal with the problem of who in Iraq gets credit for it.
Whichever faction or sect is seen as responsible for a wholesale, formal, US “withdrawal” will be able to portray itself as the “savior” of the Iraqi people. This would cause all other factions or sects to loose a great, great deal of face. Unless it was handled just right, the other factions (Sunni, Kurd, non-Maliki Shiites) would have no alternative but to redeem the lost honor via violence.
Such violence might be contained short of civil war, but even so, a great deal of additional blood would have been shed.
It is wrong to treat the ‘timetable for withdrawal’ concept as a mere logistical or security problem. It is not simply a case of, how fast can US equipment be removed, how soon are Iraqi forces available to take over security, etc. Withdrawal would have to be an incredibly delicate diplomatic maneuver as well.
Probably, the best way to withdraw would be to at all costs avoid calling it a withdrawal.
It is interesting to speculate if the relevant people in the Bush administration and McCain campaign understand this subtlety. One way to interpret the US position in favor of “permanent bases” in Iraq is that we have no real need for bases; instead we are using this terminology to avoid calling the withdrawal a withdrawal.
