“of course it’s a civil war,” Abu Ows, the custodian for a Sunni mosque in Baghdad…if I go into a Shiite neighborhood, they’ll kill me. If they come into my neighborhood, we’ll kill them. What else do you call that?”
This quote is from a New York Times correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman-penned article titled “The City of a Million Ways to Die” in the August issue of GQ magazine.
C’mon now, not that any further confirmation was needed but shouldn’t this settle it? Even the last few Bush-aholic holdouts have nothing of substance upon which to stand their rapidly receding ground. However, they still may choose to emulate those Japanese soldiers who have been discovered on various Pacific islands after the war, still thinking WWII was ongoing and Japan could yet swing it. Unless or until their cult leader, GWB, honors them with his wizard words stating otherwise, then it’s not a civil war for these patriots and ‘fighting ’em there so we don’t have to fight ’em here’ is the mantra that reigns supreme. To them, GWB is the equivalent of the fat lady and if he/she isn’t singing…
While the rest of the real world acknowledges that the situation in Iraq is hopeless and somehow getting worse than that (just what is worse than hopeless?), what are we offered but ‘stay the course, don’t cut ‘n run’ or ‘when the Iraqi Army stands up, we’ll stand down.’
‘Stay the course’ is a typical Bush inanity bromide–easily repeatable but of absolutely no meaning. It’s like choosing to remain in a car that is headed over a cliff. What’s the benefit? Where’s the logic?
Now ‘When the Iraqi Army stands up, we’ll stand down’ is akin to saying when Tucker Carlson displays the dancing ability of a professional hoofer, we will disengage. Like the twelfth of never, it ain’t going to happen.
The ‘Iraqi armies’ actually stand up everyday…the one in Kurdistan, the Madhi bunch, the Sunni irregulars.–against each other and the Americans. There is no Iraqi Army and there never will be one as allegiance in Iraq breaks down via religion, tribe and ethnicity.
The Kurds want their territory and the oil there, hoping for recognition as a national entity despite Turkey doing everything it can to prevent such.
The Shiites (and Iran) want their territory (plus more), the oil there and the institution of sharia law. GWB hit the trifecta here, handing Iran the greatest presents of all time–the toppling of Saddam Hussein, a Shiite majority in charge and Sunnis killing Americans.
The Sunnis want oil or its revenues as their territory contains none, plus greater political sway than their numbers bear. The Kurds and Shiites will agree to nothing along those lines. The Sunnis have no reason not to die fighting as, right now, it’s the proverbial rock and hard place for them.
The United States created a civil war that we can cannot end or even ameliorate–just fuel. A situation where you have to be locked and loaded in order to even possibly survive going to the market. For some, love abides but for too many in Iraq, hatred and vengeance abides.
Either we work towards the partitioning of Iraq if it’s ever possible and then hope for the best or redeploy and let the inescapable come to the fore. Staying put simply postpones the unavoidable, it doesn’t alter the destiny. There are no good determinations for the quandry in which Bush and his cohorts have so ‘wisely’ positioned the United States. Iraq is and has always been a patchwork country. We toppled the unifier, as villanous and deserving of such action as he was, and now we cannot put the warped pieces back together again. There is no solution that is politically favorable for the Republicans (despite their intense scouting for such a white knight and now that their lies are having little effect penetrating the American psyche) but that doesn’t mean further U.S. deaths need to occur. That solves nothing. It just further delays the inevitable.
