Eyeing the exits

AMERICAN PATIENCE WITH THE WAR in Iraq is wearing thin. It’s no longer just liberal blue-staters fed up with the Bush administration’s foreign policy, or Republican members of Congress annoyed at this albatross during campaign season. The administration itself seems to be growing impatient with the situation in Iraq -- especially the unwillingness or inability of the government in Baghdad to put an end to sectarian violence.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was worried enough to call the White House on Monday to check on his job security. According to presidential spokesman Tony Snow, the Iraqi leader wanted to know whether there was any truth to the rumor that he would be replaced soon if things didn’t turn around. President Bush reportedly offered his support. A word of caution to Maliki: If Bush told you you’re doing “a heck of a job,” you should be worried.

Whatever was said, Bush’s tone must have made an impression. On Tuesday, Maliki’s government dismissed the two most senior police commanders from their posts. It’s well known that members of the police forces moonlight as Shiite death squads fomenting much of the ethnic strife in Iraq. The purge of the leadership is a welcome step, but only one of many that must be taken by the Iraqis to prevent full-blown civil war.

Yet the situation is fraught because the United States is only one of Maliki’s overseers. To survive politically, he also needs to keep Muqtada Sadr happy. This is no easy balancing act. Sadr is the anti-American cleric who controls a faction of Shiite parliamentarians that backs Maliki, as well as the Al Mahdi army. Civil war is all but inevitable if such private armies are allowed to flourish. Tensions between Baghdad and Washington over Sadr were on full display Wednesday, after U.S. forces grudgingly released one of his senior aides at the government’s request.

The episode will only feed U.S. commanders’ exasperation at getting involved in what looks increasingly like a civil war. The cost to Americans of getting caught in the middle is getting painfully higher, after troops were redeployed to become more directly involved in the effort to stem the flow of violence. On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that 11 U.S. troops had been killed this week, bringing the month’s toll so far to 70.

Historian and Times columnist Niall Ferguson, though no fan of the decision to invade Iraq, has observed that this country’s most successful occupations have been its longest, in Germany and Japan. But Maliki is right to be worried. Unless things start changing, even the staunchest neocons in Washington are going to start looking for the exits.