AN IRAQI GOVERNMENT, FINALLY Nine long months after parliamentary elections, Iraq has a new government. Its leaders can't waste any more time on petty maneuvering. The March elections were only the second since Saddam Hussein's ouster. Forming the government was a sordid and costly process. The political paralysis meant important economic decisions were not made, leading to even higher unemployment. Basic services deteriorated even further. And Iraqi voters have grown even more cynical about the democratic process. The new government will have to work hard to establish its credibility. We have mixed feelings about Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki winning a second term when so many voters wanted change. In the past, he has shown disturbing autocratic tendencies and bolstered his power by inflaming sectarian differences. This time he needs to prove himself as a leader for all Iraqis. In the election, his Shiite-dominated State of Law coalition came in second -- by two seats -- to the multi-ethnic Iraqiya slate led by Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister. But al-Maliki outmaneuvered his rival and finally put together a winning coalition. As part of the deal, al-Maliki accepted an American proposal to have Allawi lead a still-to-be-created council to oversee national security issues and provide some check on al-Maliki's powers. The new government rightly includes all of Iraq's major communities. We are especially encouraged that Sunnis -- disenfranchised after boycotting the 2005 election -- were given several top posts, including speaker of parliament. Allawi's bloc has a large number of Sunni supporters, which is another reason why the new council should be given real clout. A secularly minded Sunni also became minister of education, succeeding a religious Shiite, increasing the chance that education will become more secular and inclusive. Unfortunately, Iraqi women were shortchanged, being offered only one minor government office. Iraq's factions, with their competing priorities, are going to have to work hard to make progress on the country's many problems. They must pass laws ensuring an equitable division of the country's oil wealth. They must make sweeping economic reforms, without which there is no chance of creating jobs for the 450,000 mostly young Iraqis entering the work force each year. They need to keep their promise of jobs, to the thousands of Sunni fighters who came in from the cold. At this point, Iraq's most dangerous fault line may be the oil-rich region of Kirkuk, which is claimed by Arabs and Kurds. Washington must press Iraqis to find a solution, making clear that a Kurdish secession or a grab for Kirkuk, would mean the end of U.S. support. President Barack Obama has rightly promised to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal that was published Tuesday, al-Maliki insisted that that deadline is firm. Still, the two leaders need to consider whether some number of forces -- American or from the United Nations -- should remain temporarily as a buffer in Kirkuk. The administration deserves credit for goading Iraqis into a political deal. But the long delay and Iraq's daunting list of problems are reminders that even after the troops come home Iraq will continue to need U.S. attention, support and pressure. WHAT RULE OF LAW? President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia claims to champion the rule of law. He also claims that he, not Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, calls the shots in Moscow. Medvedev can prove both true by using his pardon power to ensure that Mikhail Khodorkovsky faces no additional prison time after being convicted on trumped-up embezzlement charges this week. Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, has already served seven years as a result of Putin's judicial vendetta against him. Unfortunately, everything about Khodorkovsky's latest prosecution suggests that Russia's judiciary is still under Putin's thumb and Medvedev's talk of reform is just talk. Putin did not even wait for the trial to conclude before pronouncing Khodorkovsky guilty and demanding a lengthy new sentence. Khodorkovsky is no paragon of virtue. He made his fortune through political connections and suspect deals in the early days of Russian capitalism. Later though, as the leader of the private oil conglomerate Yukos, he began to understand that transparency was good for business. He also became an advocate of political reform -- and a bankroller of reform causes and candidates -- thereby drawing Putin's enmity. Khodorkovsky's early days as a robber baron may have left him legally vulnerable. But his 2005 conviction for tax fraud reeked of selective prosecution. Other oligarchs who steered clear of politics were not prosecuted. Then, as his sentence neared completion, the new charges were brought as a way of keeping him in jail and out of politics at least through the 2012 presidential election. Khodorkovsky plans to appeal. After this week's verdict, the White House rightly expressed strong concerns about 'abusive use of the legal system' and warned that Russian hopes for better relations with the United States and more foreign investment could both suffer. The same judge who found Khodorkovsky guilty will now decide whether to impose a second, potentially lengthy, sentence. He should ignore Putin and let Khodorkovsky go free. If the judge fails to do his duty, and the conviction is not overturned on appeal, Medvedev must use his pardon power. Both justice and Medvedev's credibility are on the line. A NEW DAY FOR WILDERNESS One of the sorrier blots on George W. Bush's sorry environmental record was a midnight deal in 2003 between Gale Norton, then the secretary of the interior, and Michael Leavitt, then the governor of Utah, that withdrew 2.6 million acres of public land in Utah from consideration as protected wilderness. As part of the deal, Norton also renounced her department's longstanding authority to recommend vulnerable public lands of special beauty for permanent wilderness protection, thus sparing them from oil-and-gas drilling and other forms of commercial development. The 'no more wilderness' policy did more than threaten some of Utah's most fragile wild lands. What it said, in effect, was that none of the lands administered by the department's Bureau of Land Management, about 250 million acres, mostly in the Rocky Mountain West, would be considered for wilderness designation. Last week, in a very welcome move, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar reversed the Norton/Leavitt agreement on the Utah lands while reaffirming his department's right to preserve other public lands in their natural state for future generations. Wilderness areas receive the highest protection -- no development, no motorized use, no resource extraction. Right now about 110 million acres are so protected, and only Congress can add new areas. But designating lands as 'wilderness study areas' -- as the Utah lands would have been before the 2003 deal -- gives them provisional protections until Congress has a chance to act. The question now -- and it's a big one -- is whether the bureau will exercise its restored authority. Salazar has instructed it to give environmental values 'high priority' when deciding how lands are to be used. But his policy does not require the bureau to conduct a fresh inventory of all its public lands or to designate new areas for interim protections. It is not even clear what will happen to the 2.6 million acres in Utah. After the Norton-Leavitt agreement, the bureau authorized some oil-and-gas leasing and opened certain areas to off-road vehicles. Salazar's order gives the agency little guidance about what to do now, including whether to rescind the leases. This leaves plenty of room for mischief from an agency that historically has been sympathetic to oil and gas companies and other commercial interests. The agency cannot be left to its own devices. If Salazar is really determined to protect this country's wild lands, he must take the lead. NO-NO BOY Courage takes many forms. Frank Emi, who died in California on Dec. 1, age 94, had the steadfast kind, well suited for lonely struggles and ostracism. He was a young Japanese-American man sent to an internment camp in Wyoming after Pearl Harbor. He could have gotten out by signing a loyalty oath and enlisting in the Army, proving his patriotism the way so many other Japanese-Americans did -- honorably, irrefutably, with their blood, limbs and lives. Emi marched in exactly the opposite direction. After receiving draft notices in the camp, he and six other young men created the Fair Play Committee. In March 1944, they signed a declaration challenging the internment policy and their conscription as shameful affronts to the Constitution and American ideals. 'We, the members of the FPC, are not afraid to go to war,' they wrote. 'We are not afraid to risk our lives for our country. We would gladly sacrifice our lives to protect and uphold the principles and ideals of our country as set forth in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, for on its inviolability depends the freedom, liberty, justice, and protection of all people, including Japanese-Americans and all other minority groups. 'But have we been given such freedom, such liberty, such justice, such protection? NO!!' Emi and the six other original signers all refused to serve. More than 300 people in 10 camps joined them. All were prosecuted. Other Japanese-Americans mocked them as the 'no-no boys.' The Japanese American Citizens League denounced them as seditious. But Emi, who spent 18 months in a federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., was right to speak out. After the war, Emi worked as a postal clerk and for the state of California. In the 1980s, he joined the fight for redress for Japanese-Americans who were deprived of their property and freedom. Congress apologized in 1988. It took several more years for the Japanese American Citizens League to withdraw its slander against the resisters. It apologized in 2000. -- LAWRENCE DOWNES 