Just a passing observation…
The administration’s stated goal in Iraq is to help the Iraqis who want to live in peace with each other do so, and thus create a strong presence for quelling Islamic terrorism in the region.
Let’s ignore for a moment the simple fact that rthe fundamental savagery and barbarism of Islam itself is the problem, and that “peaceful” Saudi Arabia is the primary source of funds and breeding ground for Wahabbist terrorism and simply focus on making one country out of a region peopled by tribes and religious factions that have been at each others’ throats for longer than there has even been Islam to divide them.
What the Administration’s goal is like, more than anything else, is making an omelet. In order to get the eggs to all play nicely together (and incorporate any non-eggish elements), ya have to break the eggs. Not just some of them; all of them. And then you must mix them together really well in order to make of the disparate eggs, ONE ingredient: “egg”.
That requires an iron chef wielding a steel whisk with no regard for the feelings and desires of the “eggs” for holding onto their generational grudges and blood feuds. (The only thing that has brought “peace” to this savage region in its long, long history: a ruler with a fist–and heel–of iron.)
And that is something we as a people are simply not ready to impose.
The most viable alternative I can see to making an omelet out of the disparate people groups making up Iraq would be to arm rthe Kurds to the teeth so they can defend their own lands and then let the factions in the rest of notional “Iraq” fight it out to settle their territorial boundaries, according to their own lights. Something along these lines:
Each thought there was one cat too many,
So they fought and they fit,
And they scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails,
Insteads of two cats, there weren’t any.
Then we can say, in all honesty, “See? Without an adult to maintain peace there, normally savage Muslims will just keep killing each other until there are hardly any left… ”
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Is It Just Me?, The Random Yak, stikNstein… has no mercy, Big Dog’s Weblog, Stuck On Stupid, Thought Alarm, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Sujet- Celebrities, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.