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Since President Bush’s address on Iraq last Wednesday, there’s been an awful lot of talk about responsibility.

Whose responsibility is it, we ponder, to pacify a country riven by civil war and to coax it into a stable, democratic future?

It’s common now to suggest that it is not the Americans – who catalyzed this atrocious civil war – but the Iraqis, who now bear that responsibility.

“The Iraqis must understand that they alone can lead their nation to freedom. They alone must meet the challenges that lie ahead. And they must know that every time they call 9-1-1 we are not going to send 20,000 more American soldiers,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin in a statement last week.

This sentiment is gaining popularity among not only those who, like Durbin, oppose the war, but also among those who support it.

But in calling for Iraqis to fix their own country after we demolished it, advocates of withdrawal are dodging their own responsibility.

After over 60,000 have died and 1,800,000 Iraqis have fled their homes as refugees, the sad fact remains that the United States caused the war.

We must now face that fact, and own up to our responsibility – our obligation – to give Iraqis the support they need.

And do the Iraqis ever need it.

While progress has been made training Iraqi security forces, only a handful of them are reliable enough to put down the sectarian militias that are tearing the country apart.

Only 10,000 Iraqi security forces – out of 115,000 that are “technically proficient” – are currently considered less “inclined to stoke sectarian strife (than) to contain it,” according to the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index.

That makes Iraq’s future look all the more disturbing when folks who supported the war, along with those who did not, call for Iraqis to now determine their own fate.

The situation in Iraq is terrible, and however painful it may be for Americans, without the presence of American troops it will only get worse.

The president’s “new way forward” in Iraq – which calls for an increase of more than 21,500 troops in Iraq and a massive job creation program – is the only plan on the table that owns up to the United State’s responsibility there.

It is indeed a flawed plan. It contains no clear political solution to the wrenching Shia-Sunni divide.

There are also questions as to whether the administration, with its dismal track record in Iraq, can even manage the troops effectively.

But still, it’s the only plan out there with a chance of improving Iraq.

Under the new strategy, American forces will now go after Shia militias. Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has sworn not to frustrate that process, as he’s been accused of doing in the past.

This is something that hasn’t been tried, and if it works, it has the potential, albeit remote, to ease sectarian tensions, and pacify the country.

Indeed, many fear that it may be too little, too late, but if it’s got a chance, then it’s got to be tried.

Our responsibility to Iraq requires nothing less.

It’s awful to see American soldiers come home wounded. It’s worse still to see them die.

But that horror is the same for the Iraqis who each day see their children, friends and lovers killed. It is the same for Iraqis who each day see their businesses and homes destroyed by bombs. Iraqis each day see their entire world engulfed in more agonizing violence and we cannot forget that we are the reason for it.

Staying in Iraq will not be pretty.

But to leave and assume that Iraqis are ready to take over when they are unquestionably unable to do so would be even worse.

To do so would abdicate a responsibility we’ve created for ourselves – the responsibility to secure Iraq for the Iraqi people.

E-mail Reed at treed@media.ucla.edu.

Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.