That whole other post

Before I got to whining about how tough it is being me and how sorry everyone should feel for me, I was talking about Iraq. I said something about how getting out of Iraq would be a whole 'nother post. This is that post.

You know, our country is like the drunken nabob who sobers up and says to himself, “Okay, it looks like I've shot my housekeeper and set fire to her children. How do I make myself come off good here?”

Meaning, any Iraq resolution is necessarily going to be tainted by the circumstances of the situation itself (I won't bore even myself re-re-reciting them). This is not a problem that can be turned into an opportunity. Even Tony Robbins would have trouble spinning this turd into gold. Being a clusterfuck, all we have to choose from are bad choices.

If we leave precipitously, ie: now, history will record that we chickened out. It just will. And we need history on our side, because the winners write the history. And the world's too dangerous a place for us to afford to be history's bitches.

We have more than ourselves to look out for, we have future generations of Americans to think about. (You know, the ones who will pay off Mr. Bush's deficit.) We have to make our humiliation in Iraq less devastating, and in the short term that means not coming home immediately.

But the longer we stay, the more we rub the local dudes the wrong way. And we really piss off the extremists. How pissed off must you be to say, “Yeah, yeah, let's blow me up in their lobby! Yeah, let's do that…!” No one yet has found a way to beat an enemy that is anxious to die. How in God's name do you win against that?

You don't. Not by our conventional, Western definition of winning that necessarily includes us still being alive at the end of hostilities. We get our 72 virgins online for $7.99 a month, thank you very much.

So really, we can't stay any more than we can leave. This is the conundrum that faced Mr. Bush's father, when presented with the opportunity in Gulf War I to proceed to Baghdad and depose Saddam. Mr. Bush Sr. passed on the “opportunity.” He's looking smarter all the time.

I predict we're going to end up declaring “Victory!” and leaving, probably with only a token presence there in time for the 2006 Congressional election. The partisan in me hopes we don't, because it will be more politically damaging to the Republicans if we stay; but the American in me hopes we do, because the sooner we've backed the fuck out of this engagement the sooner we can focus on real solutions to real problems (figuring out how to manage the problem of religious fundamentalism - ours as well as theirs) that we haven't made up ourselves (the war in formerly-secular Iraq).

The President is already defining “victory” broadly enough that we could leave Iraq, in a pinch, whenever it's the most politically expedient to do so. If the election there later this month isn't a bloodbath of Biblical proportions, folks, that's the “victory” that's gonna start the draw-down. Then we can watch from the safety of our living rooms as Iraq continues its descent into a hell on earth of revenge murders, civil war and general internecine mayhem.

This horrifying scenario, God help us, is the one that plays out if saner heads prevail. If Mr. Bush has his way, we'll stay till the last dog dies. Literally. His gang wants to turn it into a desert South Korea, with American military bases and oil companies there for decades to come.

In the final analysis, what's at play here is Mr. Bush's legacy, and he's keenly aware of that. To admit the failure of what's become the signature initiative of his administration would be to consign himself to that lower circle of half-assed Presidents who, though ignorance, hubris, or a catastrophic combination of the two, left the country worse off than when they inherited it.

And Mr. Bush is determined not to allow himself to suffer that fate, no matter how many children of other parents it costs.

So for the record, I say we fake up a few photo-op “victories” (perhaps Ahmed Chalbi can help us some more!) and start bringing our kids home as soon as we can without looking like total douschebags for taking out an impotent, isolated little tyranny and leaving a functioning terrorist inferno in its place.