Until recently I admit to holding out a slim hope that we still had a chance to succeesfully accomplish just one thing in Iraq. (Get the Iraqi Army Trained and in position to take over)
But with even Colin Powell finally discovering his long lost cojones and announcing today that Iraq has become a Civil War and Bush should stop denying it and the al-Sadr bloc now officially boycotting the Iraqi government.
I think that hope is rapidly becoming a fools folley. The bell is ringing and it's time for our troops to leave Iraq to the Iraqis.
The facts are becoming just too plain to see.
How do you proclaim "victory" when both Sunni and Shia Militias are shooting at us.
I grew up in South Central LA, so let me put this in my own terms for moment - This has become a nation level equivalent of The Bloods vs the Crips, with retailiation drive-by bombings on Tuesday for last Sunday's death-squad kidnappings.
This is a Civil War.
NBC has admitted it. The New York Times has finally come around - albiet grudgingly. Our troops are now nothing more than target practice.
This was revealed last week.
A classified Marine Corps intelligence report concludes that in Western Iraq, “the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point” that U.S. and Iraqi troops “are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar.”
We also now know that the Insurgency is more financially stable than our own government. Iraq has become the Perpetual Insurgency Engine.
Just what we trying to accomplish? What can we accomplish? Who are were protecting from whom? Whose on our side? The Hatfields or is it the McCoys? Who are the "Good Guys" anymore?
Is it Prime Minister al-Maliki?
A new classified memo authored by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley expresses “serious doubts” about whether Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki has “the capacity to control the sectarian violence in Iraq.” Among the criticisms of al-Maliki is one often leveled at Bush: that he is surrounded by a “narrow circle” of advisers who “may skew the information he receives.”
Apparently Our Boy In Iraq is in a bit of a self-bottled pickle.
The writing is all over the walls - in fact, you can't even see the walls anymore. Formerly disgraced Speaker and Presidential Hopeful Newt (We don't need no stinking Free Speech) Gingrich has even come around. Sort of.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) said yesterday “that unless the Bush administration admits that the war in Iraq is a ‘failure,’ it will never develop a strategy to leave the country successfully.”
The sad reality is that Bush actually will never admit that "Iraq is a failure" - Ever! He's never going to develop any strategy at all, he certainly hasn't so far. Iraq became a failure as soon as he decided to "Fix the Facts around the Policy" and send us into a way based on a long serious of lies.
Bush is now the sole obsticle to protecting our troops from further pointless bloodshed and allowing Iraq to resolve it's own internal differences.
It's time for Congress to act is rapidly approaching. After we've already pissed away over $300 Billion on this war, they may need to cut off funding and block the Bush Admin's new push to "Let her Rip" on Military Spending.
We may need to start talking seriously about Joe Biden's partitioning plan to create a "United States of Iraq" where each major faction would have a level of it's own independance, but still be part of the larger nation.
First, the plan calls for maintaining a unified Iraq by decentralizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis their own regions. The central government would be left in charge of common interests, such as border security and the distribution of oil revenue.
Second, it would bind the Sunnis to the deal by guaranteeing them a proportionate share of oil revenue. Each group would have an incentive to maximize oil production, making oil the glue that binds the country together.
Third, the plan would create a massive jobs program while increasing reconstruction aid -- especially from the oil-rich Gulf states -- but tying it to the protection of minority rights.
Fourth, it would convene an international conference that would produce a regional nonaggression pact and create a Contact Group to enforce regional commitments.
I actually think Biden doesn't go far enough. The al-Maliki Government is crumbling - the Iraqi people have no faith in it - and may need to be reformed into two Houses of Parliament, one proportional and representational, the other giving each of the major provinces equal say and equal power - like our own Senate - which would limit the ability of any one faction, Kurd, Sunni or Shia to ride roughshod over any of the others.
People who feel they have been guaranteed voice in government and in how their country is run don't need to take up arms to solve their differences.
This is a solution that we've actually seen work before - In Bosnia.
The fact is that Bush will clearly never go along with any such plan. Fortunately, he is rapidly becoming more and more irrelavant as events on the ground and reality conspire against him. If Bush ignores the Baker Commission and Tony Blair endorsement to engagement with Iran and Syria, no matter. Either al-Maliki and al-Sadr just might go ahead and do it anyway without his approval. In fact, they've already begun.
Increasingly Iraqis are going to take matters in their own hands and eventually the dust will settle. The only real solutions here are political, not Military. Unfortunately for Bush, Diplomacy is a game he never learned how to play - so others are going to have to take the ball away from him one way or another.
If it ultimately requires the threat and use of the I-Word (Impeachment), so be it.
Just think, not only has this war lasted longer than our involvement in WWII, the U.S. alone has had more casualties in Iraq than we had at 9/11!!
America can either be under the dust pile or standing off the side and out of the way when it's all said an done. However it all falls out - the End is coming, and it's coming soon whether any of us like it or not.
Vyan
No comments:
Post a Comment