The point strikes me as elementary. For an uncomfortable reminder, Habr Gidr hardliners made zero headway in their negotiations with the United States-until they successfully downed four helicopters, killed nearly twenty elite soldiers and took a pilot prisoner. The cost, to them and to their country, was obscene. However, they wouldn't have even had the opportunity to talk without fighting the battle of the Black Sea. (And that wasn't even a successful operation at the tactical level for Habr Gidr.)

Far more interesting is the strategy implicit in this presentation. US forces now seem to be singling out the worst of the worst for special attention. Rather than trying to impose power from the top down, local commanders are working with the existing power structure. That structure is constitutionally illegitimate under Iraqi law. It is politically illegitimate in American eyes. It is nevertheless quite real.

If the negotiations in Iraq are about whether al Qaida and the Mahdi Army will be allowed to rule the country through murder and torture, then we have a lot of friends. If the negotiations are about whether an imposed, corrupt and incompetent parliament will rule Iraq through Shiite dominated elections, we have a lot of enemies.

By limiting our targets, we open the floodgates for timely, high quality intelligence and for thousands of police and military recruits. We also reduce the number of bomb attacks directed at our forces.

What we have given up is any hope that Iraq will become a clean, efficient democracy in the foreseeable future. The central government's authority will be limited. Civil war will continue. Crime will fluorish and industry will suffer. However, none of those conditions are fatal to US interests and the continued presence of AQI and the Mahdi Army are.