Let’s all breath a sigh of relief that Iraq hasn’t lapsed back into all-out civil war. Sadr was threatening war, but now Iraqi troops are being welcomed into Sadr City. It looks as if the negotiated truce is holding.

The spin, of course, will be that the surge worked. This, of course, would be wrong. There has not been some magical improvement in the Iraqi troops within the past few months. In fact, the reason for the peace is because Maliki agreed to this condition (among others, I’m sure): No American troops.

Sadrist leaders said they had demanded that American soldiers remain on the sidelines of the military incursion.

“We stressed that the occupation forces do not come in,” said Selman al-Freiji, a senior Sadrist leader in Baghdad. “We welcome the entrance of Iraqi troops.”

Let’s get this straight. No American troops = tenuous peace. They welcomed the entrance of Iraqi troops.

On the flip side? American troops = provoking the militias.

Sayah said he was relieved that U.S. troops were not playing a central role in the operation, which would have provoked the militias. He said U.S. forces should leave Iraq.

Our presence is a destabilizing force. Our presence helps prevent peace in Iraq. Our presence is entirely counterproductive. If our goal is a stable Iraq, then our objective should be to stop occupying Iraq.

The Republican party is completely delusional when it comes to the war. Please, stop trying to feed me this bullshit that if it wasn’t for us, then Iraqis would have nothing to do other than fight each other and al-Qaeda — full of foreigners — would magically take over. While we’ve been in Iraq, the Iraqis have engaged in ethnic cleansing and there has been massive urban warfare in Sadr City for the past month. This fighting, mind you, several years after Bush declared “Mission Accomplished.” I fail to see how the US has prevented any of this bloodshed. Instead, we have taken part in it. We have fueled it. Then, when the Sadrists demand that US troops have no presence in Sadr City, they manage to negotiate a truce with Maliki’s government. There is no reason to think that the Iraqi people don’t have the ability to negotiate amongst themselves, unless you have neo-colonialist pretensions about saving the savages from themselves. The Republicans will tell you that a savage civil war is the inevitable consequence of a withdrawal, but the experience with Sadr City seems to indicate that the opposite is the case.

It’s time to leave Iraq.