Slouching Towards Babylon

20,000 more troops. 20,000 more brave children in the first blush of youth, potential, and power simply tossed away like so much trash. 20,000 more families torn apart with fear, uncertainty and grief. For what? The enormity of this tragedy is simply beyond the reckoning of any possible justification manufactured by the criminals in the White House. As I wrote back in October either we would have to begin to draw down our forces or a draft would have to be instituted to provide the necessary force concentration, to at a minimum, stabilize the country. For what? Why would the addition of 20,000 more troops - bringing overall troop strength back to where it was a year ago and ineffective then - make a difference now? It wouldn't and it won't. This is neither a strategy or a solution. It is simplistic and it is delusional. And It is in the final analysis, criminal.

The single largest conclusion drawn from this tragedy is that Iraq is not a "country" in the Western sense of the word. Iraq is an artificial creation of the British government which, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire needed to create an administrative entity for this particular part of the middle east. With Kurds in the North, Shias in the South and Sunnis in the West - all with complex webs of mutually hostile tribal and clan alliances. Saddam kept Iraq together by pure brute force. And, even with his depravity Iraq was, prior to UN sanctions, a secular, stable, and safe corner of the middle east. A country with high levels of education, health care, women's emancipation and integration into the professional classes, and a modernized infrastructure. This is now only a fond memory to Iraqis. With the failure of the Iraqi government to control the violence and deliver basic services, Iraqis have reverted to the time tested method for protection - align with your clan and its militia. The middle class exodus from Iraq has been well documented - those that could re-enforce secularism and keep the engines of commerce going have left the country leaving the worst elements of the society in control - the mullahs, the criminals, the thugs. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.

In what is emblematic of this president, rather than elevate his capabiities to the level of the crisis - like Harry Truman or JFK, he approaches the crisis from within the narrow context of his minimal capabilities. He cannot move away from simplistic good-bad formulas and analysis. He cannot synthesize contrary opinions. He cannot adapt to new conditions on the ground. The devastating whirlwind of historic forces he has unleashed are so far beyond his level of understanding and vision that he is now truly at the mercy of events - not their master. While Bush fatuously demands that the Shia led Iraqi government step up and gain control of the situation and stabilize the country - there is no country left to stabilize. Bush's invasion saw to that. It is also not in the Al-Maliki's Government's interest to subdue the civil war because that is what its goals have been all along! An indepedent and ethnically cleansed Southern Shiite state, in control of significant oil reserves and aligned with Iran. The Kurds in the North have been simply running out the clock and waiting for the inevitable collapse so they can declare an independent oil rich Kurdistan. It is the Sunnis - cast out into the wilderness of Western Iraq without any oil or commerce areas that have the most to lose from this break-up and is why the Saudis and Egyptians (and don't forget the Israelis!?!) feel they may need to support their brothers. A third, hostile, fundamentalist Shiite state aligned with Iran is simply unacceptable. Turkey, always hostile to the idea of an independent Kurdistan looks on with increasing agitation and in the event of Indepedence may feel it necessary to invade the territory under the guise of quelching the PPK and other Kurdish seperatist activity. It is into this cauldron of scorpions that George W Bush wants to send 20,000 more our children.

If any Dictator consigned 20,000 of its own people to certain grievous injury or death, (s)he would be branded a pariah by the international community and a monster by history. And that is what we are dealing with now in no uncertain terms. The legacy of the Bush presidency is that of chaos, death, and destruction on a scale unimaginable. There is no turning back, there is no easy solution, only long, hard, and very painful choices for us, for the Iraqis, and for the middle East at large. We lost from the moment our Congress voted to endorse Bush and his war mongers on this absurd and tragic adventure.