A new Iraqi government. Yippee?

I can't shake the feeling that the Iraqi government is largely irrelevant now. What's been going on in the 'burbs and countryside -- the gradual (well, quick and violent) "cleansing" of neighborhoods to purely Shi'ite or purely Sunni, the infiltration of the police and even the armed forces by private militias (especially al-Sadr's Mahdi Brigade) -- makes all the haggling and grudging compromise in the capital (and only a small part of it, at that) seem like a puppet-show, engaging to us but utterly ignored by the Iraqi populace -- or, at least, the segments of it that are interested in violence. And I guess my point is that those segments are big enough to render any promise of stemming the violence . . . irrelevant.

The counter-argument to that is that the militias are represented in the government, but I have to point out that that could just mean that any set-back by one militia's party shall result in violent reprisals in the streets. One journalist, recently returned from Iraq, characterizes the civil war there not as incipient, not as looming, not as "at the brink of", but "raging". Yay for me and my admittedly discredited prediction, I guess, but it seems to me to be the more accurate assessment of the relevance of the new Iraqi government than the Bush-Blair sunshine.

Am I just being negative?