Let the Neo-Cons Bellow, Just Bring the Troops Home

A senator from Vermont once suggested such a policy during the Vietnam War. It would have meant a defeat. In this case, it might mean chaos, at least for a while, unless you can get more international help.

You asked for help from the UN. That was good. Get back to them and say, "We're serious. We're on a fast track to leave."

To America's soldiers, you can say: "You're fighters, not social workers. The fighting's done, excellent work, and you can start going home."

To the American people, you can say: "We've changed our minds about the occupation of Iraq. We'll need only part of that $87 billion I asked for. The rest you can keep."

The warrior intellectuals — the neo-conservatives — will bellow. Let them. They don't have any electoral votes. The American people never bought their "neo-Wilsonian" fantasies of empire. Asserting American dominance was never your argument for war. You said Americans had to depose Saddam Hussein in order to protect themselves.

Our occupation of Iraq is not yet six months old and already Iraqis are making sure that we tire of it. This will not tend to get better. An antiwar feeling has arisen in the United States, and Howard Dean, a nobody from a small state, has ridden it to the head of the pack. Dean says he wouldn't have gone to war in the first place. Few notice that Dean also says we ought to stay in Iraq to do nation building.

"Well, Howard," you can say, "I'm bringing the troops home. If you're elected, you can send them back."

Would America be giving up if we did that? We would be giving up the right to reconstruct Iraq our way. We would not be giving up anything the average American cares about.

Certainly, the American people would accept a change in policy. They have accepted the official story from the start — the weapons of mass destruction, the "link" between Saddam and bin Laden, the "Woman Warrior" story about Pvt. Jessica Lynch. They are not paying much attention to Iraq. They will accept a pullout.

Consider the alternative: Five years of occupation. Maybe 10. Bombs, demonstrations, dead Americans.

Think of the Democrats. In 2002 you beat them by offering to save America from a foreign threat. If you do that in 2004, you're going to be in trouble. Americans get tired of wars that drag on and on, and tend to toss out the political party that does the dragging. Look up the election of 1952. Also 1968. Ask your dad about the political shelf-life of military victory. It is less than one year.

Think of the economy. Business has been terrible since you became president. The people have been pretty forgiving about that. They know the dot-com bust was not your doing (nor Clinton's, really). You have given the people a tax cut, and Alan Greenspan has given them rock-bottom interest rates. In normal times, these would produce a snapping recovery. But war sits on business confidence like a fat man on a dog.

Your war, a Republican war, of which the politically profitable part is over. We are now in the losing part. The occupation of Iraq could drag on well past November 2004.

But you can forestall that. Lean on the UN. for troops. Lean on the Egyptians; they owe us a favor or two for the billions we've doled out to them. Speed up the creation of an Iraqi government. You don't need to wait for elections. That's Iraq's business.

Then you can announce that most of the troops will be home by Christmas and you will not be needing all of that $87 billion.

Nobody expects you to do this. It will shock your friends, but what's more, it will confound your enemies. It will also steer the Republican Party back toward that nationalistic but "humble" foreign policy you described three years ago, which best suits the interests, and the patience, of those who might vote for you in 2004.

Their good will toward the American-led occupation authority -- despite the personal suffering wrought by the war -- might help explain why this sprawling Shi'ite Muslim slum has not risen up in revolt and in quiet ways has provided a bulwark of support for coalition forces.

''The Americans did us a great favor by getting rid of Saddam,'' Adnan Hamid said. ''We owe them. And I don't think they will abandon us.''

On April 8, the day after residents of Sadr City welcomed US soldiers, Fedayeen Saddam fighters rained shells onto their neighborhood in retribution. One exploded in the Hamid courtyard, killing Mohammed, 6; Rokaya, 4; Aya, 3; and Adnan's sister, Amal Hamid. Shrapnel ravaged both legs of a relative, Kaiss Hamid.

At the end of April, Zainab Hamid had sunk into such deep depression that she stopped breast-feeding or even speaking to Bunayah. It fell to Adnan -- with no job -- to care for his daughter, feed his extended family, and seek apparently futile treatment for his little brother Kaiss, in the hospital with gangrene but unable to afford antibiotics.

Now, a cage with three yellow and blue parakeets covers the mortar crater in the courtyard.

Kaiss, with help from the Italian Red Cross field hospital, has recovered. Doctors amputated his right leg at the knee, as well as half of his left foot. Neighbors took up a collection to buy him a satellite dish for entertainment since he barely leaves the house.

Two of Adnan Hamid's sisters who live with them have given birth to girls since April; one is named after Rokaya.

And in six months, Zainab expects her baby. She is still reeling from watching three of her children die before her eyes.

''Every night I drown my pillow with tears,'' she said. ''I wish I had died instead of my children.''

Shyly placing one hand on her stomach, she said they will name the child after Mohammed or Aya, depending on whether it's a boy or a girl. The tentative order restored to the Hamid household has also come to Sadr City and has won coalition forces a measure of peace. Despite the headline-grabbing Shi'ite clerics who denounced the foreign troops and the riots last month after US soldiers in a helicopter ripped a religious flag from a tower, the slum's neighborhoods have seen sweeping improvements in the quality of life under the US occupation.

The military says it has already spent $600,000 in Sadr City rebuilding a town hall, a municipal office building, and three police stations. The results so far: Recently electricity ran uninterrupted for four days, unheard of during the Ba'ath Party regime. An independent municipal government now collects daily the garbage which perpetually choked the area's streets.

And in the Hamids' quarter, at least, the nightly gunshots and fear of crime have subsided. Adnan Hamid and his friends sit in white chairs on the roadside long after midnight, talking politics and work.

After the war, Hamid and his neighbors hesitated to discuss politics, the weekly visits from regime intelligence agents still fresh in their minds. Now, they break into laughter as talk turns to the hoped-for capture of Hussein.

Iraqis, Adnan believes, will show the same patience with national reconstruction that they have in painstakingly reclaiming their personal lives.

''You have to give the Americans time,'' Hamid said. ''The infrastructure is old, pipes are rusty, power plants are broken. You can't fix it all in a day.''

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