It is time to ponder the strategic impact of the casualty figures. Those that are relevant to this analysis are widely familiar. The United States has lost approximately 1,500 dead in military action and 10,000 wounded, and we continue to lose, dead, about 50 soldiers every month. The Iraqis (using loose counts) die and are wounded at about 10 times the U.S. rate. Moreover, the Iraqi deaths have increased substantially since the national election in January.

We know philosophically that all deaths should be counted equally, since we are all God’s children. But it isn’t surprising that U.S. concern should focus on deaths of our own troops, with concern for Iraqi casualties mostly as a building block of strategic reckoning. It may sound inhuman, but it is very human to care about our own on the battlefield. And doing so sharpens the strategic picture for us. We are entitled to say to ourselves: If the bloodletting is to go on, it can do so without our involvement in it.

The indecisive course of affairs keeps us from saying with any confidence that Iraqi security forces are now capable of maintaining a peace. Some will reason that the impulse to kill will wither the day the last American embarks for home. But it is by no means safe to conclude that if U.S. troops withdrew tomorrow, killings in Iraq would end. The U.S. troops are the most tempting targets of the insurgents, but every day bombs go off and suicide killers set out, even when there is no prospect of killing a U.S. soldier.

We have, by our agitation for free elections and human rights, enlivened Iraqis who had never experienced freedom, and we can safely assume that their enthusiasm for a freer society affects the public mood. But it is manifest that also affected are those whose determination is to advance their cruel agenda. The hatred of the Shiites for the Sunnis is not seriously affected by the existence of U.S. troops in the area. The resentment expressed by Kurdish spokesmen for parliamentary approaches to human problems is felt like the bite of steel wire across the palm of the hand.

It is easy and imperative to tally the deaths of Iraqis caused by Saddam Hussein. What does not follow from this exercise is any confident conclusion on how Iraqis would have fared in the absence of Saddam. Algeria, Libya, and Vietnam tell us what can happen when you chase away foreign authorities. “It is difficult, but you get used to it,” Naba S. Hamid, a biology professor at Baghdad University, is quoted as saying. “It has become part of our daily lives. Just like eating, sleeping, there is bombing.”

There are two burdens in America, one of them ascribable to our conscience. We can’t “desert” those who enlisted in our proclaimed cause. We did exactly that when we deserted Vietnam, but we are unlikely to do it again in the Near East, because too many people are looking directly on and would understandably react against U.S. nonchalance with rage and contempt.

But the burden we took on as the military agent of regime change is legitimately moderated by the passage of time and the achievement of proximate goals. We said we’d remove Saddam Hussein, and we did. We said we’d train non-Baathist security personnel, and we have not only done so, we’ve left in place reserves that can maintain institutional batteries of reform. We said we would introduce popular rule, and we did so: Parliamentary government at least exists.

The day has to come, and the advent of that day has to be heralded, when we say that our part of the job is done as well as it can be done, given limitations on our will and our strength. It is an Iraqi responsibility to move on to wherever Iraq intends to go. Our job depends heavily on being done when we declare it to have been done, not by the legerdemain proposed 30 years ago to get us out of Vietnam, but by reasonable talk about reasonable but limited commitments to Iraqi reform.