As we await the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, I urge you to look at Andrew McCarthy's recommendations at NRO. McCarthy recommends that we concentrate on killing our enemies in Iraq -- primarily al Qaeda -- not on trying to prevent Sunnis and Shia from killing one another. Beyond that, he recommends that we focus on existing terror-supporting regimes. Not by enlisting their support for a "stable" Iraq but by trying to bring them down, which could include the use of our military.

McCarthy concludes:

If we’re shrinking from the greater war, of course our troops shouldn’t be sitting ducks in Iraq. If we’re not going to turn them loose against the forces that most threaten them, as well as the rest of us, of course we should get them out of there.

Won’t that give al Qaeda and Iran a crucial victory? No, it would make official the victory they are certain to win if we don’t refocus. Unless our actual, overriding purpose in Iraq is to crush al Qaeda and its sponsors — rather than hope we can delegate the job to the newly trained forces of a Maliki-led government — our enemies will have their victory. All we’re otherwise doing is running out the clock and running up our casualty count.