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I don't mean to make light of genocide, but genocide is the LEAST bad of the likely results of a premature US withdrawal. More dangerous is the prospect of (1) a terrorist state much more dangerous and destabalizing than the Taliban ever was that (2) leads to regional instability of the likes hitherto unimagined. Al Qaeda has always dreamed of overthrowing moderate Sunni regimes -- with a toehold in Iraq, they'll be able to threaten the survival of the Saudi, Jordanian and Syrian regimes. And with a US withdrawal the ONLY regional counterweight to Al Qaeda supremacy will be a nuclear Iran.

Can you imagine a world where 90% of the world's oil is fought over by forces loyal to Al Qaeda and forces loyal to Tehhran? This isn't a humanitarian problem, this is a global security problem.

All of your points are well made. I've believed for a long time that too many people have been unwilling to even consider what the consequences of failure in Iraq mean. This has allowed them to sell a Utopian scheme as realism. That is, we withdraw and Iraq basically is a non-issue minus Saddam. There seems to be no sense in these people's minds of the effects of a vacuum in Iraq. If we could guarantee that all of America's enemies would fight to the end and exterminate each other there, that would at least have a cynical appeal. Many Iraqis have fought bravely beside our forces. To pull the plug now would doom the word of America as hollow.