As long as United States forces were moving forward against an organized military in Iraq, George W. Bush was in control of events. Once there was no opposing uniformed army, military power inevitably becomes less effective and complex social forces dominate raw power. Recognizing this, the president set a timetable to transfer authority and responsibility to the locals, by June 30th of this year, so they could resolve their own more complex cultural concerns.

The mutilation of three U.S. civilian security contractors, dragged by a Sunni mob through the streets of Fallujah, dramatically and horribly interrupted the progress toward an orderly transfer. Six days later a dozen Marines were killed in nearby Ramadi. But these only highlight that March was the bloodiest month of the occupation, bringing the American total killed to over 600 and 1,500 additional in the Iraqi police and military. Overall, Americans have suffered 3,400 wounded and the average of 200 per month can be predicted to continue as long as American troops carry the load of the occupation. The fact that the bombing in Madrid took place the same month did not help. The April casualties will be worse in the Sunni triangle, if only to settle these scores.

Early April also saw the first major violence from the more quiescent Shia majority. In response to the closing of Moqtada al-Sadr's newspaper and the arrest of one of his top aides, the supporters of this young claimant to the leadership of the Shia majority were told to be at the "utmost readiness and strike where you meet" the enemy. The next day demonstrations broke out in a half dozen locations widely disbursed throughout Iraq. Nine soldiers, eight of them American, were killed and three dozen wounded in the subsequent violent confrontations. By day's end Sadr told his supporters to end the violence but to seek "other things" as ways to "intimidate your enemies." Two days later, after an arrest warrant was issued for Sadr, violent demonstrations broke out again across the Southern part of the country.

America's regent in the area, L. Paul Bremer, had the correct response to the Fallujah outrage, "Their deaths will not go unpunished." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the military reaction will be "deliberate, it will be precise and it will be overwhelming." Ambassador Bremer concluded, "These murders" are "painful" but "they will not derail" our plans. Similar statements followed the other violence. There is even a new realism regarding the problem. While U.S. authorities have been placing the blame on al Qaeda and Saddamists, senior State Department counter-terrorism expert, J. Cofer Black, recently told Congress that the allies have captured 70 percent of al Qaeda leaders and disrupted communications, and now less organized groups of locals and foreigners who were inspired by Osama bin Laden's vision but are acting independently have become the major problem. Gen. Kimmitt now attributed the violence to "a cancer inside the society," a reaction more consistent with the fact of mob frenzy and widespread killing.

But neither the Sunni cancer, the Sadr rabble-rousing nor the foreign jihadist threat are the greatest danger to American forces. Raw power can keep each under sufficient control to allow for an orderly transition. The real problem is from the peaceful elements in Iraqi society. The armed militias of the non-Arab Kurds are real armies that have been trained and supplied for years in their autonomous homeland under the protection of the allied "no fly" zone. If anything threatens their important interests, Kurds could unleash forces that would make the Sunni and Sadr irregulars look positively benign. But the greatest danger comes from the seemingly most serene source, the majority of quiet Shia who are influenced by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sustani. While he has been scrupulously non-violent and restrained even in his speech, Sustani is extremely forceful and has one bottom line, "a constitution for the country that preserves its unity."

The problem with his desired unity is that it threatens the Kurdish bottom line of autonomy from the Arabs and the Sunni demand that they not be ruled by what they consider heretical Shia law. Bremer realizes this and has insisted upon a Transitional Administrative Law that divides rather than unifies power. Only three of its provisions matter. Forget about the widely praised Bill of Rights. The old Soviet Union had a wonderful statement of rights that was equally ineffective without a mechanism to guarantee it. The important provisions are for a federal system to separate the warring parties, a multiple executive with vetoes representing each of the three major parties to prevent abuses, and a provision that any three provinces can veto sections of the final constitution to guarantee that no critical group could have its essential interests violated. Despite the crowing of the neoconservative war party types--much of it before the document had even been released--the TA Law has not been broadly accepted.

Ayatollah al-Sustani, representing a 55 percent Shia majority, wants a direct democracy and he cites the authority of President Bush for it and the support for his demand given to him by such sources as The Weekly Standard. Straight majority rule is his unshakable demand--for obvious reasons. Federalism would frustrate the will of the people, he says. By not even speaking, with a hand-written note from his son, al-Sustani delayed the signing of the basic TA Law and, afterward, he obtained the support of 12 of the 13 Shia members of the American-appointed council to revoke the critical provisions. Since then, a large network of Shia clergy and supporters has organized widely and secured thousands of signatures on a petition to revoke the three provisions, which al-Sustani says remain "as obstacles to arriving at a permanent constitution." Given the ayatollah's success in changing the election process, it would be foolish to underestimate him.

Given the instability, the powers to be at home are starting to question the June 30 deadline. Not only do the usual suspects at The Standard insist upon an indefinite presence, the Democrats, while still criticizing the initial invasion, have decided occupation would not be such a bad idea. Several have "congratulated" President Bush for belatedly supporting their idea of nation building, after having rejected it during his campaign. The Senate Foreign Relations Committees' ranking Democrat, Joseph Biden, Jr., now says we will need "tens of thousands of troops for many years." Sen. Carl Levin--the most aggressive and smartest partisan in the upper house and minority leader of the Armed Services Committee--says, if the conditions are not right on June 30, "the risks of turning over sovereignty outweigh the risks of not doing so."

President Bush almost certainly did not purposefully mislead the American people about his distaste for nation building or about his reasons for going to war in Iraq, as his enemies claim. He, no doubt, overemphasized conflicting intelligence information in the wake of 9/11 and came to the conclusion that invading Iraq would assist in the war on terrorism. But it is pretty clear now that he was wrong and his father, who apparently warned him beforehand, was correct--that the dangers of occupation outweighed the benefits of trying to nation-build. Iraq is not one nation but at least three with conflicting interests and values. To create one nation from three, much less a unified democratic one, was just as impossible as the senior Bush had concluded in the first Gulf War. The current President Bush's undersecretary of state, John Bolton, advised that the U.S. should topple Saddam Hussein and then "get the hell out immediately," according to one of his assistants, in a recent The New Republic article, for that is all that was required and possible to fulfill legitimate American interests.

Regardless of the validity of the decision to nation-build, the administration correctly decided to set a date certain for transfer of authority, to train Iraqis to police and patrol afterwards, then to have U.S. forces confined to a few, well fortified positions, and finally to get out completely as soon as possible thereafter. The training has been slower than hoped, apparently only one percent of the 208,000 Iraqi police and military are fully trained and armed, and the U. S. forces have not been consolidated as much as desired, but the plan is moving forward. The occupation has resulted in more casualties than the war but that was the result of occupation not of the plan. Anthony Cordesman, a former government official, says that the U.S. can only honorably withdraw if asked to do so by the Iraqis themselves or in the face of civil war. It is difficult to see why these would be more honorable than handing power to the Iraqis on June 30 or leaving immediately after the election in January--before a civil war envelops U.S. forces.

No matter how long the U.S. remains, the religious and ethnic divisions will persist. As the continuing incidents and casualties in Bosnia and Kosovo prove, the ethnic and religious realities remain even after a decade of force and democracy lectures. So, it will be better to get out now with as few causalities as possible. June 30 will be the last chance. If that date is slipped, the president loses the initiative and the U.S. will be there for decades. The author has not been able to raise the courage to go to Walter Reed Army Medical Center but a friend who has says that the heroic men and women missing limbs there should convince anyone. The deadline simply must be met or the hospitals will be filled for the foreseeable future. Sure, it will mean disorder and more group fighting and, perhaps, even civil war in Iraq. But that will take place whenever the U.S. departs. Better now while our forces are still strong enough to successfully disengage, unlike in Vietnam.

President Bush will need great courage to keep to his plan over the next three months. But it will cost him less in the long run than extending the deadline, as Richard Nixon learned to his deep regret. Turning over power is the last decision still wholly in his hands. Then the initiative turns to al-Sustani. The president must muddle through with brute force, diplomatic savvy and threats to leave even sooner to provide a decent transitional interlude to survive until July, to say nothing of November or January. In his own, his nation's and the world's interests, President Bush must announce, and soon: "The United States has completed its mission in Iraq and will turn all authority to its people, as we promised, on June 30 of this year and, except for strategic forces in defensible bases, all American forces will be home after the January elections. Then it will be up to the Iraqis to complete the job."

By Donald Devine, Editor