Should US stay in Iraq, or leave?

On perhaps his final trip to Iraq as secretary of defense, Robert Gates made this offer: The U.S. will keep troops in Iraq past the agreed-upon Dec. 31 departure date if the Iraqi government asks for them ― but it has to do it soon.

In Baghdad, Gates said, "So if folks here are going to want us to have a presence, we're going to need to get on with it pretty quickly in terms of our planning." He could have added that past a certain point it would be politically impossible to throw the departing American military machine into reverse.

Not that we have much of a military presence now ― 17,000 troops down from a peak of 165,000 ― but we are still the most powerful force in Iraq.

An aide to Gates said it was clear from discussions with Nouri al-Maliki that the Iraqi prime minister wants some U.S. presence past 2011. But the Iraqis' official position is no, they want us gone.

An Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, reiterated that position: "We think that the presence of these forces is not suitable for Iraq, and these forces have to leave by the end of 2011.''

Maybe al-Maliki, who heads a rickety coalition government after finishing second in the election, feels he's not yet politically strong enough to endorse retaining American troops.

And it hasn't helped that he hasn't named a defense minister or an interior minister, the officials in charge of the military and the security forces who would be instrumental in negotiating any new status-of-forces agreement.

Given the Iraqi military's shortcomings in air power and logistics and its need for skilled military trainers, al-Maliki would be wise to find a way to keep the Americans there. He faces possible confrontations with the Kurds over the status of Kirkuk in the north and a threatened revolt by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Shiite militia, and, of course, there is the always-meddling Iran.

The U.S. would be obliged to stay if the prime minister asked within a reasonable length of time, but it probably wouldn't break Washington's heart if he doesn't.

The article was published and distributed by Scripps Howard News Service (www.scrippsnews.com).