Iraq will not go away. The Democrats won a substantial victory in the November election, and it was Iraq that made it possible. The American public voted in support of “a new direction.” They are entitled to have that. What that new direction should be is now the debate. We have learned that one day before the Nov. 7 election and his resignation, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, according to The New York Times, “submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major course correction.”

Rumsfeld wrote, “In my view, it is time for a major adjustment.”

The discussion now is what options are available and which should be implemented. The options proposed by the Baker commission overlapped in great part Rumsfeld’s suggestions. According to The Times, Rumsfeld proposed “modest troop withdrawals … redeploying American troops from ‘vulnerable positions’ in Baghdad and other cities to safer areas in Iraq or Kuwait, where they would act as a ‘quick reaction force’ ... consolidating the number of American bases’ in Iraq to five from 55 by July 2007 ... [to] punish provinces that failed to cooperate with the Americans by withdrawing economic assistance and security ... [thereby] setting a firm date for removing forces from Iraq.” He describes the latter as a “less attractive” option. Two days later the Baker panel “urges basic shift in U.S. policy in Iraq” beginning “to move its combat forces out of Iraq.”

Europe and even some institutions in the United States have already demonstrated their willingness to roll over like a beta wolf before the attack of the alpha wolf and beg for pardon, as they did in the case of the caricatures of Muhammed by a Danish newspaper. There were few Western world leaders willing to applaud or stand with the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who said, “We will not apologize because we live in Denmark under Danish law, and we have freedom of speech in this country. If we apologized, we would betray the generations who have fought for this right and the moderate Muslims who are democratically minded.”

Americans are justifiably tired of the situation in which our regional allies—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey—and our NATO allies decline to join us in Iraq with boots on the ground, leaving the United States to suffer the casualties on the battlefield. The American public is understandably fed up and believes “enough is enough.” So now we must decide what to do.

First, we must acknowledge that we are witnessing a civil war in Iraq. What else can it be with Sunni and Shia Muslims killing each other?  The Times reported on Nov. 23, “In the deadliest sectarian attack in Baghdad since the American-led invasion, explosions from five powerful car bombs and a mortar shell tore through crowded intersections and marketplaces in the teeming Shiite district of Sadr City on Thursday afternoon, killing at least 144 people and wounding 206, the police said … Shiite revenge was swift. Shiite fighters fired about a dozen mortar shells into the predominately Sunni Arab neighborhood of Adhamiya in northern Baghdad, wounding at least 10 people.”

So it goes, on and on. Yet President Bush and his administration refuse to call it a civil war. It is like the Korean War with the North Koreans and Chinese, which the Truman administration refused to describe as a war, calling it a “police action.” The first item on any future agenda is to accept the truth and the facts on the ground.

We appear to be losing the war in Iraq. Henry Kissinger said on BBC television, “If you mean by clear military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control … I don’t believe that is possible.”

I have suggested that we inform our allies we are getting out unless they come in and fight shoulder-to-shoulder with us in Iraq. That proposal, which I made many months ago, has received little support. My second proposal is that we demand an immediate vote by the Iraqi parliament on whether or not the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq and under what conditions—acceptable to our military command—as they relate to the rules of engagement. If they refuse to take such a vote, we should announce that we are unilaterally leaving and start our withdrawal. If they vote that we should stay, then we should set our conditions for doing so, one of which being the arrest of cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose militia continues to attack and kill American soldiers and Sunnis, and is a major part of the ongoing Iraqi civil war. Taking the parliamentary vote becomes even more critical with the release this week on CNN of “A new survey conducted by Iraqi pollsters [which] shows the daily violence is escalating Iraqi demands that U.S. troops leave. More than half the 2,000 Iraqis surveyed said they want all U.S. troops out now. And almost half the remainder want a withdrawal to begin immediately.” Nic Robertson of CNN reported, “Members of the independent survey team [were] trained by the U.S. State Department.”

Unimportant, except for the pleasure it would give Americans and the justice involved, would be the stripping of the Presidential Medals of Freedom given to L. Paul Bremer—who three years ago, disbanded the Iraqi army, which, like Humpty Dumpty, does not appear to be capable of resurrection—and George “Slam Dunk” Tenet—who destroyed the CIA’s capability to accurately advise the president on Iraq and its possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch can be heard every Friday at 6 p.m. on Bloomberg Radio.