How To Tell If Your Surge Is Working

If the surge were a success, Mc Cain and Bush would be bringing home the troops. The fact that McCain and Bush want to keep the surge in place means the surge is a failure. The need to keep the surge means there is a need to keep Iraq from falling apart. If Iraq will fall apart without the surge, then the surge has failed. Until the surge is not needed the surge is failing. If a surge in troops does not stabilize Iraq enough for the surge troops to go home, then there is no point in keeping them in Iraq.

If there were the possibility of the disparate forces in Iraq coming together, these forces would be taking advantage of the presence of American troops. That is not happening. Sharing power is not on the agenda for any of the players in Iraqi politics. All sides are planning to wage war on each other once the Americans go home. The surge is only wasting lives, money and resources by suppressing an inevitably violent struggle for control of Iraq. Let the Iraqis create their own future. And let Bush get the credit for whatever results.

Reality and Iraq

A person becomes an adult when they reach the point where they stop hurting themselves. As a nation we will have reached adulthood when we are able to stop doing things that hurt our country.

Immaturity justifies self destruction by blaming others. For example, the immature teenager says "life is confusing and school sucks so I'm going to use drugs." Getting high won't help make life less confusing, nor will it make school suck less. It will, however, decrease one's ability to deal with those realities. Addicts are known for justifying behavior that's clearly self destructive and sticking with it no matter what the cost.

The war in Iraq was created by America's power elite for perfectly logical, even idealistic reasons: to protect ourselves, to spread our noble way of life, to foster peace and security, to liberate an oppressed people and to bring justice to a madman. Not much there to argue against. That is the problem. The fact is our logical underpinnings don't matter. Even if there were WMD in Iraq, we don't have enough of anything required - expertise, money, equipment, expendable lives, allies, time or patience - to invade, control and re-organize a Middle Eastern country. Period. There is no "But..." If America was a mature, sober country we would have said to Bush - "your rationale is all well and good- but we don't have the ways and means. Let's figure out another way to protect ourselves." It doesn't matter if invading Iraq made logical or ideological sense. Reality said it wasn't possible.

Our leaders didn't fail us ideologically- they failed to get real. America supported removing weapons of mass destruction - that's not an ideological motive - but only a country detached from reality - or an addict - could think invading Iraq would make everything all right and stop the world from sucking. Just as addicts must give up the self destructive notion that drugs will make it all better we must give up our national self delusion that believes we can ignore reality because we are America. America can't make it all better. Liberals, neo-cons, libertarians, conservatives, progressives - we all want to use America to make the world stop sucking so much.

Our national America Will Make It All Better ideology has become a lethal drug- and our politicians are our dealers. Our dealers tell us we are far and away the richest, most powerful country on earth, unmatched by any other. Liberals, progressives, conservatives- Americans of all stripes - are found of saying "the richest country on earth ought to be able to..." We Americans have rationalized self destructive behavior and our ability to withstand damage, and, like drug addicts, we have clung to our self justifications in the face of a reality that says we are being hurt and hurt badly.

Iraq has shown us reality and reality says we are not as strong and rich as some of us thought: and now we wretch and moan as we go through ideological withdrawal: increasingly our resources are needed here at home, and there is less and less available for outside problems no matter how pressing. we have just enough strength to defend ourselves against an attack on our own shores - but that's it, just ask anyone from New Orleans - we cannot project meaningful military power around the globe beyond cruise missiles and air strikes. The good news is that should be enough. We should be careful to notice that defeating our real enemy - Osama Bin Laden - was well within our means. As soon as we left reality and looked to Iraq we came up short. We can handle reality just fine. If we stay in reality we will be able to handle whatever comes our way.

Reality also tells us that our government is incapable of creating foreign policy dependent upon understanding cultures not rooted in our own, and, most importantly, despite our sincerity, that it is not at all impressed with our idealism. Bush once said that God told him to invade Iraq. Yes, George, reality trumps even God. I'd rather go fifteen rounds with Bush's God than cross reality any day.

Depending on who you talk to Iraq was a bad idea to begin with or it was a good idea which failed because Bush was incompetent, or it was a good idea but Iraq, a country of enemies forced to live together for centuries, was not ready for democracy - which means invading was a bad idea - unless you wanted to replace Hussein with another Hussein, which is a really, really bad idea.

The fact is nobody knows whether or not invading Iraq was a good idea. Hillary Clinton seems to think we could have succeeded if not for Bush. Certainly Dubya made things horrible. Disbanding the Iraqi army created huge problems, for example, but keeping it together would have created huge problems, too. Incompetence is not an attribute exclusive to the Bush Administration. The boys over at Fox News are delighted to point out past presidential war time blunders-especially Lincoln's. All wars suffer from incompetence and bad planning.

But even if Bush got everything right, as Hillary hoped, it's clear that a higher standard of administrative competence could not have prevented Iraq's long dormant civil war from igniting once Hussein was removed. The question is would 500,000 troops have kept a lid on things? Many say yes. Nobody who says putting 250,000 to 500,000 troops on the ground after toppling Hussein mentions we could never afford to keep such troop levels in Iraq long enough to keep civil war from breaking out somewhere down the road. We couldn't afford any invasion scenario. That was abundantly clear four years ago whether or not we could somehow protect ourselves by saving the Middle East. We didn't grasp this on a national level because we are addicts out of touch with reality.

The addict says driving the car drunk and crashing was basically a good idea mishandled, gets in a cab and vows to drink less when driving in the future. Fat chance. The about to die addict gets back in the car he's just wrecked and says "once more into the breach!" - and tries to make it home. The sober man stopped drinking altogether, rebuilt his life and made amends for the damage he caused while driving drunk. He admits it was never possible to continue to drink and avoid crashing his car. What are our dealers doing? Hillary's gonna keep drinking and driving and vow to be more careful. Bush is back in the car ripped off his ass, bleeding from head to toe whimpering "once more into the breach." That guy is a nightmare. If we are to sober up from this horrible four year bender we must admit it was never possible for an invasion of Iraq to succeed regardless of how much sense it makes, and that no amount of effort and resources can change reality.

Nobody has the foggiest idea how to make Iraq all better, and reality doesn't give a rat's ass whether we figure it out or not. Reality isn't interested in what we'd like to do. The debate over Bush's plan is wasted energy. It doesn't matter what we think we ought to be able to do to protect ourselves. We will just have to deal with Post-Bush Iraq after we leave as best we can, keeping in mind reality rarely if ever overwhelms our ability to protect ourselves. The war in Iraq is doing more to harm us than any attack terrorists could muster at this point. We cannot afford any idea, any mission, any use of force - any strategy in Iraq. We don't get to use Iraq to effect regional security in the Middle East. We don't get to help spread democracy or keep Al Qaeda from gaining a foothold in Iraq. We must stop our national tantrum. We cannot afford to fight the war. End of story. If America stays, America dies. We need to get the hell out, sober up, deal with reality, and learn to stop justifying behavior that hurts our country.

The 3rd Option: Iraq, the 51st state of The United States of The World

The 3rd Option: Iraq, the 51st state of The United States of The World

As soon as we leave Iraq, whether it is a year or ten or fifty years from now, Iraq will instantly break out into a vicious civil war. Iraqi troops may be able to stand up at some point, but the ranks will disintegrate along sectarian lines at the first sign of trouble, which should come a few seconds after the U.S. pulls out. Staying until Iraq stabilizes means staying forever. Perhaps that is why the U.S. is building a dozen or so permanent military bases in Iraq. If we're going to stay forever then let us make Iraq the 51st state.

Many problems will be instantly solved. There will be no question of "When do we bring the troops home?" They will be home. What politician wouldn't want to take credit for bringing home the troops? Whenever we send troops to Iraq in the future we'll be sending them home. When a town like Haditha or Tikrit starts acting up, we send in the National Guard like we did with Katrina or the riots in LA. It may not even make the front page.

Every Iraqi can have full U.S. citizenship, which means the right to carry guns and form militias, so none of the insurgents will be law breakers. They'll just be good 'ol Americans diggin' on their constitutional rights. They'll have free speech, separation of church and state, freedom of religion, the whole kit and kaboodle.

The biggest prize of all is their oil, which is nice. Think about this for a second: we will no longer be dependent on foreign oil markets. We can start pumping at capacity and really start partying. OPEC? We'll be a member of OPEC- and a member with a pretty big stick. How much would Dubya and Cheney like to send a representative to those meetings? Can you feel Cheney's heart ready to burst just thinking about it? We can build pipelines, ports -- whatever is required -- and settle into our SUVs again without having to worry.

The Iraqis will get all the American institutions at their immediate disposal -- they won't have to go through the arduous, bloody process of building their own while we empty our kids' pockets helping them struggle through. They'll have a Supreme Court, a defense minister, a secretary of state, an attorney general, and the best military in the world. We'll give them two Senators and expand the number of congressional representatives another twenty or so- - maybe just bump it up to an even 550. They'll have all the laws, traditions and cash they need. They can elect a governor and mayors and a state assembly -- all of their own people. We won't be training Iraqis to somehow build their own military -- we'll be training them to be U.S. Soldiers. We can sprinkle Iraqi recruits throughout our military so they can't form deadly little pocket militias.

Iraq will be a new, better California -- a businessman's dream: very low taxes, if any, a desperate to work at any wage populace with no unions, and tons of infrastructure rebuilding projects so the local pols can dole out the jobs and contracts. Think of the tax revenue the U.S. government will start pulling in. Deficit? What deficit?

An immediate, long term benefit is that we'll instantly take away the biggest weapon terrorists' have -- the rallying cry that America hates Arabs. We can look Arabs around the world right in the eye and without laughing say "We love Arabs! We just made Iraq our 51st state! Leave us alone, Terrorist Guy! We gave Arabs freedom and human rights, protection and a voice in our government. Look at all the free, prosperous Arabs going to their mosques and raising families and voting and going to school! Look at all the Arab businesses benefiting from NAFTA!"

Imagine Joe Morgan on your flat screen HD TV announcing: "The Baghdad Bombers of the Arabian Baseball League meet the New York Yankees on ESPN's Monday Night Baseball! Next! The Bombers vs. the REAL Bombers! Murderers' Row vs. The Insurgents!" That feels so fresh.

While we're annexing Iraq, we can give religious conservatives here three or four southern states, say Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, and let them secede from the Union to form their own fundamentalist country. They can call their new country whatever they want -- maybe The United States of Christ. Or Jesumerica. Or Americhrist. Or The Confederate Christian States of America. Maybe just let Texas secede, too -- call this new Christian paradise Texachrist. And why not Utah and Idaho? They can call themselves God's Country.

These Christian spin-off countries could be just like Iran. They can make their Falwells and Robertsons and Ralph Reed Jesutollahs. They can have each have a constitution based on The Bible, where Christianity is the official religion and English is the official language. They can have an official Christian News Agency -- CNA -- that's really, really fair to Christians. They can ban abortions, medical marijuana, assisted suicide, dissent and homosexuality. They can put prayer in schools, on the nightly news and in the halls of congress, put the Ten Commandments in schools, the courts and toilet stalls, put crucifixes on driver's licenses, bring back the draft, make warrantless wiretapping legal -- just let them go to town and ban everything from flag burning to taking the lord's name in vain to Janet Jackson's right nipple. They can gut environmental laws, drive armored 8 mpg SUVs to work and live in smoggy, polluted cities and listen to Christian rock at the disco on Saturday night. They can lock down their borders, fight drug wars, ban welfare, censor music, movies and television -- except when violent -- let the corporations and wealthy pay no taxes, let the poor do all the fighting and do whatever else will make them feel safe.

Every right-winger could go to an Americhrist Country to live and we'd be out of each other's hair. Then if anybody in the U.S. starts getting religion in a too feverish way they'll have the option of moving to a country built just for them, leaving the rest of us to enjoy the U.S. Constitution and its protections. How nice would it be to be able to say "You want school prayer? Move to God's Country! Don't like dissent? Move to Texachrist!"

Now for the really cool part: Ok -- we make Iraq the 51st state, then let Iraq secede with Texachrist to form a brand new country. They can call their new country Irachristas. Or Texiraq. America will be free of Iraq and can get busy finding viable alternatives to oil. Meanwhile Dubya and The Nation Builders can go back to Texiraq and play their Middle Eastern axe. The Texiraqians can be totally responsible for Iraq's future and pay all the costs themselves.

The Jesumerican Dream, it seems, is some kind of Keebler Village, armed to the teeth, where nothing bad ever happens. In Jesumerica the issues and challenges one faces in life would be managed by a hege-maniacal imperial force like that imposed on earth's civilizations by the robotesque alien guy from the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. In that typically '50s film an alien made of shiny metal comes down from space to earth and tells all of humanity to "stop fighting each other or I will destroy you!" like some exhausted parent bursting into their rambunctious kids' bedroom yelling "Knock it off and go to sleep or you'll be grounded all summer!" The Christian Right wants Jesus to burst in to the rambunctious halls of Congress, set all the rules and then enforce them.

The problem for RightyChrist Nation is that for some inexplicable reason God doesn't seem to be that robotic Jesus daddy keeping everyone in line they so desperately want. After all, God keeps allowing large numbers of liberal and gay people to go un-smitten. Very un-Godlike, to be sure. So The Right has pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and decided God does for those who become Jesus Daddy Dominatrix for themselves. They see America, the strongest nation on earth, as perfectly positioned to be the militaristic authority galactic moral policeman they crave to keep everyone in line. They think God handed them control of America to make this wish come true. Of course Bush was going to invade Iraq as soon as he got elected. Back when he was governor he no doubt asked his advisers to come up with a plan to have the State of Texas invade Iraq.

If we give them their own nation they can make everything all secret, give corporate CEOs senate seats, remove all business restrictions and regulations and generally run their Christian paradise into the ground, bankrupt it, mortgage its future to the Chinese and wallow in their own Christ-like misery. If they try to invade somebody they'll have to do the fighting and they'll have to pay for it. It'll be easier for everybody, especially for Americans who want to uphold the constitution.

Leaving Iraq

Leaving Iraq

Who can argue with democracy in the Middle East? That sure would be nice. Bush and Cheney never understood that the non neo-con objection to invading Iraq was it wouldn't work. A western country, let alone America, imposing democracy on an Arab state from the barrel of a gun is a terrible, awful, miserable idea. Neo-cons like Francis Fukayama love to say that no one could have predicted the disaster that is Iraq today. Hundreds of millions of people around the world -- right and left -- saw exactly what was coming and screamed at the top of their lungs. By "nobody" Francis Fukayama must mean "Neo-Cons".

Bush was wrong to invade in the first place. Now Bush says cutting and running from Iraq would be disastrous. Let's look at his track record and see if he can rightly claim expertise on the subject: contrary to Bush's assertions, the war in Iraq won't be quick, it won't be cheap, it won't help break down terrorism, it won't make America safer, it's not going to stop WMD, it's not going to stop a tyrant from running Iraq, it's not going to improve stability in the middle east, China is getting involved now, it's become a huge disaster that will go down in history as the worst of all the results of this miserable war, and it won't even help the oil markets. Our resources are drained -- the U.S. Government is bankrupt and cannot pay for the needs of its citizens: we're cutting anti-terror funding to New York City and Washington. The only thing left to accomplish in Iraq is delaying the day when all hell breaks loose.

The record shows Bush has been literally dead wrong on every major issue concerning Iraq, not to mention his stubbornly inept analysis of pre-war intelligence. In fact, he's been not just wrong but spectacularly, disastrously wrong, and worse, has shown no meaningful interest in learning from any of his grotesque failures. Why is anybody even considering this man's take on Iraq?

In fact, the best way to determine a successful course of action in the Middle East is to do the exact opposite of what Bush says. Bush is the George Costanza of foreign policy. Everything he has done in the Middle East has failed miserably. If he says 'stay' the best thing to do is leave.

Who has been right about Iraq? Who has been consistently able to predict exactly what will happen? The Left. I say the Left, not Democrats, because too many Democrats voted for the war. Should we listen to the side that has gotten everything right or the side that has wrought disaster? Was the Left just lucky on Iraq? Who cares? Lucky is better than Bush any day.

As soon as we leave, whether it is a year or ten or fifty years from now, Iraq will instantly break into a vicious civil war. We have two basic choices allowing for some variation. We either stay in Iraq forever becoming the new Saddam Hussein, or we realize we have lost a war we could never win and cut our losses. Bush's big idea, to continue with the plan that created this disaster, meets the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. How can anyone sane listen to Bush?

Nobody is, really. Nobody is putting their money where their mouth is anyway. Bush's core support group is making our kids pay for the war. They aren't taking responsibility for their beliefs and paying for Iraq themselves -- no way -- they want their tax cuts. How disgusting is that? The great patriots of America are not running in droves to the local recruitment office. Why? Because everybody knows we're not defending America -- we're failing to shove democracy down the throats of a lot of people who want us to leave them alone. America's Great Patriots don't want a bite out of that sandwich -- they're not even willing to give back their tax cuts! If that's not a sign nobody believes in Bush's war then life is meaningless. From this point forward every effort, every sacrifice, every dollar spent and every life lost is a waste.

So let's talk about the disaster the Republicans claim will happen if we leave. Only 7% of the insurgency is Al Qaeda or foreign. The insurgency is really Iraqi citizens going after each other and our troops. As occupiers we're not stopping them from going after each other. Leaving Iraq won't stop them from going after each other either. If we leave we will stop them from going after us. If we leave and Iran invades then Iranians will be slowly bled to death by IED's just like we are now. They'll be weakened and drained of crucial resources just like we are. They'll be isolated by the global community. There'll be U.N. sanctions, babies will starve, money will dry up, and Iranian citizens will get pissed off.

Bush compares the Hungarian uprising against communism in 1957 to today's Iraq, but he misses the fundamental difference between the two scenarios. Hungarians rose up and fought for democracy themselves. There is no grassroots struggle for democracy in Iraq. Give them an election and they'll vote, sure -- but they're not going to risk their necks fighting against competing religious fanatics for democracy. They'd rather ensure their religion survives by defeating their rivals in battle. The only one willing to fight for democracy in Iraq is Bush.

Hungarians had the will to fight at whatever the cost for however long it took to see their dream come true. Iraqis want to fight to protect their religious interests. Some may think democracy will help protect or advance their religion, but a vast majority of religious fundamentalists don't like democracy and tolerance. Iraqis are not inchoate Americans. So yeah, democracy will no doubt falter and could easily get crushed if we leave. But if democracy does take root, it's not going to happen with us hanging around. If a grassroots pro-democracy force gets it together in Iraq then at that point maybe we can chip in and help a brotha' out. The only way to get democracy in Iraq is through a civil war, and civil war is being repressed by American troops. As long as we are there the only political reality with any meaning can be an American dictatorship.

Whatever happens in Iraq, it's time for Bush to take responsibility for it, not taxpayers and our military. He's making the soldiers on the ground pay for his disastrous mistakes with their lives. He's making America pay for his disastrous mistakes by wasting our taxes and pulling resources away from the war on terror. Bush's Iraq policy is keeping us from securing our country. We are putting hundreds of billions into securing Iraq while neglecting the security of this country. That is disgusting. I never thought I'd live to see the day when the far right fails to secure America. Democratizing Iraq may be a part of a larger effort to undermine terrorism, but only way, way down the line, well after we have secured this country first. It's his fault pulling out of Iraq could be a disaster. Let him suffer the consequences of his own actions. Bush knew the risks and he gambled. When you're beat you fold. You don't call, and you certainly don't raise. He should be the one to lose -- not us.