The White House loves those sports metaphors, it seems. A senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the bottom-line message of Dick Cheney's Baghdad visit this week: "It's game time."

The vice president, carrying the Bush administration banner in Iraq, seems focused on pressing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the rest of the fledgling government to buckle down.

The Iraqi Parliament appears to need that sharp nudge, given its current plan for a two-month vacation during the summer. Senior U.S. officials — most onlookers in the U.S., in fact — regard such a lack of urgency with plain annoyance, even outrage.

While the government struggles to find a political solution to the intractable sectarian conflict, lives are being sacrificed in the hope that the Iraqis ultimately can forge a system with the stability that its society needs to rebuild.

It's critical for Cheney to convince the leaders how badly this plays on the world stage. But making it so will mean a steep uphill battle.

Bush critics want a better-defined exit plan than the White House has provided. What's needed is a collaborative effort that trains Iraqis to ensure a safe environment for the people and to sustain their democracy, on their terms.

Democratic ideals are embraced in the U.S. and other Western nations, where the rules of order have developed over centuries. The mechanics of democracy don't come easily in a nation where tribal loyalties trump everything and where sectarian clashes have become firmly rooted throughout history.

The dream is that Baghdad will begin standing on its own, but the reality is that guiding Iraq to a more stable footing is a shared burden the U.S. won't be able to shed for years.