Iraq: Now What

Watching action, adventure, or spy films these days is equivalent to being a fan of pornography.  It is all fantasy and the real thing is much better or worse depending on the genre and one’s predilections.  The action hero always wins and the porn stars are really acrobats.  With the war in Iraq winding down to a contest between the US and IED’s  on the one hand, and the Wahabbi Sunni’s versus everyone else on the other, death, destruction, and horror have lost their power to do anything other than frustrate.

That the attack on Iraq by the United States was ill-advised, poorly planned, and over assumed is obvious now.  At the time there were signs that such might be the case but they were too vague in the circumstances surrounding 9/11 to gain much traction.  In the end it will be the bane of George Bush’s historical perspective despite all the good things he has done in the past 6 years.  He now seems to be running out of gas.

Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld seem to have underestimated the difficulty in subduing a few Arabs in Iraq, which is certain to have been their early assessment of the problem.  Even the Democrats thought so at first and were screaming in pain that Iraq was a political war that would eliminate them from power for years to come.  Now, of course, they love the war as it puts them in the best position to supplant the Republicans in recent years.  The United States economy is doing well, the Democrats are on the wrong side of illegal immigration, abortion, gay marriage, taxes, and a host of other issues.  The war, which is not even a war anymore, is the one issue that might give them the edge.

The American people are tired of sacrificing their children for the freedom of people who don’t want it and who are unwilling to help fight for it.  The attitude in the USA is becoming one of “Let them (the Iraqis) kill each other to their hearts content.”  This attitude has nothing to do with the vacuous Hollywood anti-war nuts, this is a judgment based on three years of work with little to show for it.

Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz will most likely bear a large share of the historical disdain for today’s situation; Bush will bear the rest.