Juan Cole on last week's violence

From Juan Cole:

Someone should explain to me why last week's events are an argument for keeping US troops in Iraq. What did they do? Did we hear about any US military units guarding Sunni mosques as they were being attacked by Shiite mobs?

This is a great point. If we are in Iraq to provide security so that it doesn’t descend into civil war and chaos, isn't a descent into civil war and chaos the time to act?

We can’t have it both ways. We can’t pretend that we are there to nobly protect freedom, but not step in when violence gets out of hand. If we are going to police Iraq into a Democracy, then at a minimum we need to stand between mobs and victims.