Marble Composition

Burt Bacherat Was Right

Breaking up is hard. It's hard to do. It's hard work. This kind of break up would be historic:

The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, meets Tony Blair in London today as violence in Iraq reaches a new crescendo and senior Iraqi officials say the break up of the country is inevitable.

[...] (20 people dead, 70 wounded, blah, blah, blah, same shit.)

Funny how we can only learn about these developments from a British newspaper. Carrying quotes like this one would be unforgivable in an American newspaper, because then it might lead to charges of that dreaded "liberal bias":

"Iraq as a political project is finished," a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: "The parties have moved to plan B." He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west," he said.

"Finished". I wonder if anyone bothered to notify the president. Not that he'd care, or that it would matter. And the carnage rolls on:

In the past two weeks, at a time when Lebanon has dominated the international news, the sectarian civil war in central Iraq has taken a decisive turn for the worse. There have been regular tit-for-tat massacres and the death toll for July is likely to far exceed the 3,149 civilians killed in June.

Here's the tie-in with the fresh violence going on in Lebanon and Isreal:

"The government is all in the Green Zone like the previous one and they have left the streets to the terrorists," said Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Iraqi politician. He said the situation would be made worse by the war in Lebanon because it would intensify the struggle between Iran and the US being staged in Iraq. The Iraqi crisis would now receive much reduced international attention.

This Iraq Project is over. To call it a war anymore is farce. The "war" lasted about four weeks, and then the forces of ignorance, ineptitude, and corruption took hold and doomed the whole thing to utter failure. Maybe a three state solution was the answer in the first place. Maybe Hussein's brutal tactics were the only way to hold these factions together. Either way, when Iraqi politicians start talking about dividing up Bahgdad, it's time for U.S. forces to pack their bags and move on. Or better yet, head home. There's nothing more for them to achieve. Could things get this bad? Losing our Army? Doubtful, but possible.

Admitting loss is a hard thing to do, but it's the only we as a nation can move on and form a better order; one that we'll have to wait for. Let's say, January 21st, 2009.

posted by FuzzFinger @ 7/24/2006 06:36:00 PM