Iraq has passed the tipping point. It is spiraling out of control. There are no more solutions. There has never been any good solutions, but now there are no solutions whatsoever. Everyone is wasting their breath trying to figure out a sensible and moderate way out of Iraq. It is completely hopeless.
Today, Shiite militiamen burned six Sunnis alive in the street while the crowd - and the Iraqi army - watched. Nearly everyday, people show up with drill holes all over their body and their heads missing. The death toll is almost averaging a hundred people a day. It's over. We have broken Iraq and there is nothing we can do to fix it.
I am a huge advocate of constructive criticism. It is easy to say what is wrong, much harder to say how to fix it. At every step along the way of this great Iraqi misadventure, I have tried to lay out what I thought was the best choice out of all the bad options in Iraq (there have been no good options in Iraq since we invaded, only the lesser of horrible evils).
But now we are completely out of options. The bloodletting has slipped past the tipping point. There is no way to undo what has been done. We can stand in the middle but, unfortunately, we can't make the situation any better. And there is an excellent chance we are making it much worse.
First of all, we are training an Iraqi army when there is no such thing as Iraq. No one in the streets of Iraq believes in their country above their ethnicity anymore. A united Iraq is a western fantasy. In reality, we are training a Shiite army that will eventually butcher the Sunnis, become an ally of Iran and, in the end, turn on us. This is so obvious. I find it shocking that people can't see what is clearly in front of their eyes.
Do the Shiites look like they're going to live with the Sunnis happily ever after? Why on God's green earth wouldn't a Shiite Iraqi army be a natural ally for a Shiite Iran? Why can't we learn the lesson of the mujahideen in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein Iraq - that when you arm people in the Middle East to fight against your enemies of the moment, they wind up coming back to fight you eventually?
I wonder if history would repeat itself if we ever had leaders who didn't have their heads buried so far up their asses. Has anyone in this government read the history of our involvement in the Middle East? This is why people talk about the drastic step of impeachment. Our leaders have set the world on fire, they have absolutely no idea what they're doing and they promise to only make it worse. If a serious, thinking adult doesn't take over this government soon, the consequences are going to be even more devastating.
I have been warning on our show for the last year that if we didn't straighten out the ship as soon as possible that we would eventually leave Iraq in helicopters from rooftops. Well, it looks like we are now inexorably headed in that direction.
What are we going to do as the violence spirals around us? Wait for the mythical united Iraqi army to stand up? Wait for national reconciliation in Iraq? Wait for a stable, thriving democracy in Iraq? What the hell are we waiting for?
I can promise you this -- none of President Bush's so-called goals in Iraq are going to be accomplished, even the dramatically scaled back ones. We won't even have a vague semblance of stability. Instead the violence will circle us and threaten to swallow us whole ... until we load up the last Americans on a couple of choppers on the roof the largest embassy in the world and leave Iraq in disgrace.
You can furiously disagree with me and call me a defeatist (if any simpleton tells you that we are going to have "victory" in Iraq, just ask him what that means and watch him flounder around for five minutes until he finally blurts out, we have to "nuke them all"). In the end, no matter how much anyone huffs and puffs now, the result will be the same.
I am not hoping for this outcome, I am only cataloging it. Wishing it wasn't this way doesn't make it so. The whirlwind has started and it's headed in our direction.