Road out of Iraq

Scripps Howard: The U.S.-Iraq pact passed a key, and perhaps final, hurdle when Iraq’s three-member presidential council -- a Kurd, a Sunni and a Shiite -- signed the security agreement.

The parliament had approved it earlier. The agreement, at Sunni insistence, may have to be put to a referendum in late July. But U.S. forces will have withdrawn from Iraq’s cities a month earlier, so the American presence should be less onerous.

The pact calls for American troops — except for those the Iraqi government specifically asks to stay — to be out entirely by Jan. 1, 2012.

Improved security

By one grim measure, the security situation has improved markedly. The 17 Americans killed in November were the fewest since the war started in 2003. Still, the day was marred by three suicide bombings — two in Fallujah and one in Mosul that killed two U.S. soldiers and at least 15 Iraqis.

Should the Iraq war come to a satisfactory conclusion, we should not make the same mistake we did after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 — congratulate ourselves on a job well done and turn our backs on the country. We must stay engaged diplomatically, economically and culturally, and welcome young Iraqis into our universities.