Quagmire

Well guess what? Iraq is a quagmire. For the Republicans it is an ugly situation like the Bay of Pigs plans or Somalia. It's time to figure out how to saddle the naive Democrats with it the way they did Pigs and Somalis.

So what really happens if the Gringos suddenly retreated to Kuwait? Probably ever Iraqi who ever smiled at an American would be killed. Civil war seems inevitable. The devolution of the state or Iraq seems inevitable. A huge mess seems inevitable.

If all this comes to pass because of the Democrats they will have eggs on their faces worse than the Pigs or downed Black Hawks. Who remembers that JFK inherited the pigs from Eisenhower and his naive trust in the CIA? Somalia started with the first Emperor Bush but it hurt Clinton and the Dems.

The Iraq conquest was idiocy. I saw it from the beginning. The moment the invasion began I proclaimed that at least Bush would therefore be defeated in 2004. Sadly I was also supremely naive. It took the American people much longer to become aware of the Bush/Cheney/Neocon folly. I hadn't allowed for the billions spent on pro-occupation propaganda/disinformation spread around the mass media.

So here we are. No way forward, no way backward. Gulliver's screwed.

I recently wrote John McCain who publicly supports and increase in the effort to subdue the Iraqi militants.

> Dear Senator McCain
> You may be right that America cannot up and leave Iraq precipitously.
> But why should the American people have any more trust in you, your
> Republican friends in the White House or the Pentagon to manage the
> future any better than they have the past five years?

The problem is that the operation has been so grossly mismanaged by the very people who ask the world to be patient while they fix it. What an absurd proposition. They believe in the corporate model. Successful CEOs are handsomely rewarded and the failed CEO goes. But America is led on all levels by failed CEOs in both parties. The Democrats are equally incompetent to fix the world's problems. The K St. project is alive and well. Money and influence trump logic, science, public service, compassion, and good judgment.


Senators who had the good sense to vote against the invasion resolution should be rewarded. (Sadly the only Republican dissenter was defeated in 2006.)

• Daniel Akaka (D-HI)
• Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
• Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
• Robert Byrd (D-WV)
• Lincoln Chafee (R-RI)

• Jon Corzine (D-NJ)
• Kent Conrad (D-ND)
• Mark Dayton (D-MN)
• Dick Durbin (D-IL)
• Russ Feingold (D-WI)
• Bob Graham (D-FL)
• Daniel Inouye (D-HI)

• Jim Jeffords (I-VT)
• Ted Kennedy (D-MA)
• Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
• Carl Levin (D-MI)
• Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
• Patty Murray (D-WA)
• Jack Reed (D-RI)
• Paul Sarbanes (D-MD)
• Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
• Paul Wellstone (D-MN)
• Ron Wyden (D-OR)

One alternative is to just leave the ungrateful Iraqis to their own fate. The image is rather horrendous. But at least the Europeans would be forced to intervene in what would become a hot-house of fundamentalist insurgency. Or would they until the results were knocking at their door? Presuming our leaders did all this to secure a predominate position in the Iraqi oil patch. Europeans were dissuaded from supporting the war because they wouldn't get a piece of the oil action. To back off now and let anyone else exploit Iraqi oil would be the real lose. America spent all those billions building the Oily Casino. Folding the Gringo's cards and dumping it all now won't happen.

But what about all those poor soldiers and marines dying there? On the real-world geo-political stage, 10-20,000 fighters is chump change. Fixing the world after WWI and the depression cost over 60 million lives. During "peacetime" since 1945, an equal number of people have died in (mostly stupid) conflicts from Korea to Vietnam to Biafra to Darfur. It won't end. As the world's resources run out those with the power to do so will take what they need from the well first. In a way this is the root of the Iraq situation. Water will be the next big one eventually.