We should not have gone to Iraq because going to Iraq implied staying and staying implied leaving. Now begins the leaving, and it will be bloody. All else is an illusion. This weekend another Iraqi government, the third in three years, entered office under American guns in Baghdad’s green zone. Ibrahim al-Jaafari gives way to Nouri al-Maliki, though neither the defence nor internal security posts are filled. These are posts that matter, with their murky unofficial links to police, militias and Baghdad death squads. The reason they are unfilled is that post-withdrawal Iraq is already up and running. Power has...