Mark Kleiman is unthrilled by the Iraqi election results.

He asks "What are we going to do if the new government politely asks us to make sure the door doesn't hit us in the ass on our way out?"

I'd say we should make sure the door doesn't hit us in the ass on our way out.

I'm pretty sure a hasty US withdrawal would be bad for Iraq, but I'm really really eager to get out and I'm not even personally there.

At least we know where Iraq stands. We can hope that the Shi'ite fundamentalists and the Sunni fundamentalists can work together to bring Iraq back into the middle ages, but we must fear that they will fight a religious war over minor theological quibbles and major personal ambitions.

It is a bit of a shock when Moqtada al Sadr is an advocate of compromise.

some changes could very well pass, since there is new openness on the side of the Shi’ites too to renegotiate at least some features of the constitutional framework as indicated by Moqtada al Sadr’s so-called “Pact of Honor” (Gilbert Achkar in Informed Comment December 9) as well as Kanan Makiya’s recent op ed in the NY Times (“Present at the Disintegration” December 11) both of which are willing to suspend the plans for ethnically based regional “federalism.”

Needless to say people less reasonable that Moqtada are likely to prevail.