After shunning the United Nations and global consensus against war, the United States pushed ahead. War has consequences for both victor and the vanquished. We are not able to decide who won and what victory is at this stage.

Public opinion surveys show that Iraqis feel the greatest security threat they face is not the insurgency or sectarian conflict but pervasive criminal violence. For a people accustomed to a stifling regime security presence under Saddam Hussein—and the correspondingly safe streets—the post-intervention upsurge in murder, home invasion robbery, kidnapping, carjacking, and rape is fundamentally disturbing.

As Pentagon officials weigh the pace and timing of a sizable troop cut in Iraq, they worry more about the reliability of U.S.-trained Iraqi police than about the more developed Iraqi army.