President Bush has consistently maintained that the United States and allies will "stay the course in Iraq." That course has now been given a finish line:

American administrators will hand over sovereignty to a new transitional government by June, the Iraqi Governing Council said Saturday, announcing an accelerated U.S. plan for ending the occupation of Iraq. The plan would mean the end of the U.S.-led coalition administration in Iraq, but not the end of the American troop presence. The new Iraqi government would negotiate an accord on the status of U.S. forces in the country.

I'm a bit surprised by the brevity that will now be applied to the struggling country's reconstruction. Internal security - particularly against organized paramilitary elements - must be achieved. If I disagree over anything with Secretary Rumsfeld, it's his intimations that disrupting free movement of Ba'athists and terrorists is a task for Iraqis themselves. The compromising of borders and law enforcement (despotic or not) has always been, unfortunately, an unavoidable consequence of dislodging a totalitarian regime. And it is our responsibility to restore order.

Given that popular opinion is strongly in favor of liberal civil rights and the Iraqi government has already declared economic policies almost more laissez-faire than our own, we don't need to worry much about law-abiding Iraqi people following the correct course towards free-market democracy.

History can lend some insight, too. First of all, the Japanese held elections throughout their occupation; even though the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers held great powers of oversight, the people could send chosen representatives to parliament. Second, according to most accounts, the majority of reforms mandated within General Douglas MacArthur's "Basic Directive" were accomplished by 1947. Not long after, the occupation underwent a policy shift known as the "Reverse Course," one more strongly dictated by the State Department in the interests of Cold War strategy. Moreover, Gary D. Allinson's Japan's Postwar History maintains an evaluation of "reform early, reform often":

Timing was a major consideration. Simply put, reforms advanced earliest had the greatest likelihood of easy acceptance.

If the job of creating a peaceful, free Iraq couldn't be accomplished on this schedule, I doubt the Bush administration would have chosen it. Domestic pressure has been more intense than before, during and immediately after military action, but it hasn't been particularly focused (or based on much more than ahistorical critiques and political opportunism). And another consideration is to reserve forces for additional military actions against terrorist states as needed. I'm very curious to hear reactions from others - I'll post them here as they come in.

OTHER THOUGHTS: Major Sean Bannion, apparently posting on Sasha Castel from Baghdad, has a mixed reaction. Obviously, this is a compromise; they're never pretty. Personally, I'd disregard sectarian favoritism and some police corruption in the first year of free living after twenty years of Saddam and twenty more of assorted dictators. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Think about one democracy's near-entire southern population living among sectarian favoritism and endemic police corruption nearly two hundred years after the country's inception. Hint: Selma. But Bannion's in the middle of it - that speaks for quite a bit.

Andrew Olmsted is a little bit less optimistic - and rightly demands some evidence from the adminstration that it hasn't gone soft on nation-building. My qualifiers above will only go so far. The next few days will be crucial for the White House to communicate with those who have invested faith in the president's ability to fight terrorism by fighting its nursery, dictatorship. But is it a cave? I doubt the White House to be so naive as to think that any problems in Iraq after the projected transition of power would not be considered its responsibility; that's the sort of duck-and-run we saw from Clinton and H.W. Bush (and Reagan in Lebanon), which only encouraged September 11th. And why would Bush paint himself into a corner by torpedoing his own foreign policy? Even though domestic pressure has certainly factored into this decision - and the left is already spinning it as abandonment - the last motive I'd suggest would be disavowal.

GIVE A LIBBY A GUN, AND: Armed Liberal did what I made sure not to do - write a blog entry before giving the announcement some analysis. Trust me, I spent a very unhinged two-and-one-third seconds while I stared, slack-jawed, at the television. Then I collected myself and started reading. Then I posted! As usual, the Winds of Change comment thread is worth just as much as the writing of A.L. and the rest. I added a comment of my own. Two remarks that stand out are Chuck with "Hasn't [Bush] earned some trust by now?" and Peter Stanley who echoes my strategic consideration:

Most of the US forces in Iraq will have to be elsewhere by 2005. 2005 is the first year that oil production from Iraq and Russia will be able to really squeeze or replace the Saudis.

There's Syria, Iran, Libya, Venezuela to be worried about and that's for starters.

Very, very interesting. Monday's going to hit Washington D.C. like water from a bursting dam.

THE TEXT: After a quick scan, it looks to be on the right track. And not one mention of a doggoned "Islamic Republic."