"But the Middle East is not a pottery store."

James Fallows has an article about security and strategy called "Why Iraq Has No Army" in the latest Atlantic Monthly. Even the little bit that non-subscribers can see is instructive.

The crucial need to improve security and order in Iraq puts the United States in an impossible position. It can't honorably leave Iraq—as opposed to simply evacuating Saigon-style—so long as its military must provide most of the manpower, weaponry, intelligence systems, and strategies being used against the insurgency. But it can't sensibly stay when the very presence of its troops is a worsening irritant to the Iraqi public and a rallying point for nationalist opponents—to say nothing of the growing pressure in the United States for withdrawal.

Retired Lt. General Odom has a lovely piece about the Middle East as the Global Balkans. There are a number of solid historical comparisons that suggest that pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq is a sound thing to do, or want to do.