Our troops in Iraq have now pulled back to bases outside the cities. Violence has begun to escalate. Most experts--even the Iraqis themselves--have doubts whether their army can provide security for the country. Other experts have been saying for years that civil war in Iraq is inevitable as soon as U.S. forces withdraw...whenever that might be.

So what do we do if civil war really does escalate in Iraq? We have 130,000 troops who will be located in hopefully safely secure bases outside the cities. Do we redeploy them to to quell the violence? Remember, that would require that we violate the agreement that we signed with the democratically-elected Iraqi government calling for the terms and timing of our troop withdrawals. Such a redeplyment back into the cities would be wildly unpopular among the Iraqi citizens and would almost certainly result in renewed attacks on our troops.

And, oh, remember one other thing...our 18-19 year old soldiers over there were still in grade school when the Iraqi army began "training" to protect their own country. It takes them awhile longer to produce a soldier than it takes us, I guess.

My feeling is that we declare victory and get the heck out of there. Is there some reason I don't understand why we should keep American kids in harms way, protecting Iraqis from killing one another when their government and populace isn't interested enough in stopping the bloodshed by training an effective army made up of their own citizens to protect themselves? What am I missing?