Prime Minister Maliki has announced that US troops can leave “any time they want”, and in essence added that we could also not let the door hit us on the ass on the way out.

Is this a show of confidence? Unlikely. More likely, considering the wealth of criticism of US actions he heaped on us, he expects that the US’ plan is dashing his dreams of arming Shiite militias through the Iraqi Army we finance, and crushing the Sunni militias as soon as the US, exhausted of war, departs. For now we have a more effective and balanced military strategy. Now we have - at least rhetorical - emphasis on the primacy of a political solution. Now we have accountability leveled against his government.

And so now Maliki fears that we are on to his vision of a state-sponsored Shiite insurgency. If not “on to him”, at least that we are canny enough to know that arming Sunni extremists puts a check on Shiite extremists. He doubtless fears the outcome that we have suggested the Surge strategy could enable - armed Sunnis, armed Shi’a, and an Iraqi Parliament forced by the presence of a high-level US delegation to enact effective reconciliation, or at least to be held more accountable. He must be reading my blog.

Or he sees the writing on the wall. Either way, he knows that we’re now taking a subversive approach towards Sunni opposition, and that deflates the Shi’a predominance of the Iraqi state’s struggle against the militias. He also must suspect that while we work to focus on al-Qaeda with all Nationalist forces we can muster to our cause, we will also not tolerate the blatant intervention of another foreign agency - Iran. That Maliki’s announcement came merely a day after we hit a Shiite police station suspected of being a nexus of collaboration with Iran’s “Delta Force”, the “Quds Force”, and attacked the financial assets of that force, is no coincidence.

Now Maliki has given the White House a poison pill to swallow in reply. The Administration’s options to respond are severely limited. His critics, even moderate Republicans among them, will surely say, “You are being told by the American people to leave. Now the Iraq people have said you can leave. Do you think you know better than the American people and the Iraqi people?”

And, of course, we do know better - we know that Maliki is not an ally, has never been an ally, but is an adversary. He is an extension of the will to Shiite dominance that has in its factious ranks such other charming characters as Mukhtada al-Sadr. By further extension, he is connected by a singularity of vision to Iran.

I have sometimes felt Iraq could be well-served by simply acknowledging that it is a Shi’a dominated state. The Shi’a are the leading force in the political structure we endorsed - a democratic structure. If we, too, have been forthright in our stated aims for the Iraqi government’s formation, we would abide by their wishes and leave.

But if we are to be honest with ourselves, we need to recognize that in Prime Minister Maliki we do not face a mere difference of opinion over the course of the Surge, but a hostile regime of our own creation.