I sing of Olaf glad and big

From e e cummings, today's all-too-relevant cautionary tale.

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

We as a nation have entered into one war with a great deal of provocation, which is now going to hell, because we decided on a second simultaneous war, this time with no provocation at all. Among the things we should probably avoid is ANOTHER FRICKIN WAR!!! Sadly, we seem to be doing our best to provoke one, and I'm not even talking about the current war in Somalia, in which we've taken to aerial bombardments of the local nomads.

Let us review, for a moment, the demographics of Iraq. The country is 60% Shi'ite, 20% Sunni, and 20% Kurd. Saddam was a relatively secular Sunni, who brutally oppressed the Shiite majority throughout the country as well as the Kurdish population in the North. Both of these groups received aid and comfort from the Iranians in various forms, since the Iranians hated Saddam for launching a war on them in the 1980's. This is a war, of course, during which we supported the Iraqis and Hussein.

When we went three years ago to overthrow Hussein, there was only one possible political outcome that could have worked: a Shiite-Kurd alliance that had cordial relations with both the US and Iran. Essentially, the Shiites are a majority, and have deep religious ties with Iran (the major Shiite powerhouse in the world). The Kurds already run their own part of the country, and basically seem to be happy to be left alone as much as possible, allowing them to kill off any residual Arabs in Kurdistan and cement control over the North of the country including the city of Kirkuk. For both parties, allegiance with Iran is a given; only their relations to us were in doubt.

The problem with this whole situation is that we don't get along very well with Iran, even though they are the obvious counter-balance in the world to Sunni dominance and al-Qaeda (remember, al Qaeda hates Shiites, and considers them unbelievers; the hatred is mutual). Even under the leadership of Mohammed Khatami, we never extended them an olive branch, blaming the reformers for their own lack of power within the country. In reality, Khatami only had limited power, since hardliner Ali Khamenei is the supreme leader in charge of most of the foreign policy. In invading Iraq, we had a chance to mend these fences, and reshape our entire approach to the Middle East, out of both desire and necessity. We passed up this opportunity, needless to say:

while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments--

The bastards in charge of the country are now maneuvering for conflict with Iran. First, we put a naval officer in charge of the military for the Middle East, even though Iraq is a land-based conflict. The only possible target of our Navy and its huge supplies of cruise missiles is the Iranian military. Next, we raided an Iranian diplomatic station in the city of Irbil in Northern Iraq and detained several Iranians, the second such roundup in the past month. The station was hardly there secretly, the Kurds in charge were in the process of having it declared an Iranian consulate, and tried to keep American troops away. They later stopped the US troops from making further arrests at the local airport. Remember, this is our most loyal ally in the country, and we have our guns aimed at each other. cummings:

Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

Leading foreign policy experts say that Bush's recent speech was actually more about Iran than Iraq, setting up the justification to increase hostilities. Steve Clemons, one of the leading liberal bloggers on foreign policy issues, lays out what he thinks will follow: gradually increasing hostilities designed to consciously provoke a war with Iran.

Simultaneously, we are sending more troops into Iraq, but under a set of conditions that deny reality. We have forced Maliki to agree to disband militias, but he is blowing smoke up our ass (the US people's) on behalf of our government. He is only prime minister because of militias. The current governing factions supporting him as prime minister include Maliki's Dawa party, which lacks a militia, and the Sadrists, who control the Mahdi army, the dominant militia in Baghdad and much of the South. Sadr props up Maliki. If Maliki goes down, his replacement would be from SCIRI, which runs the Badr brigade and is even more closely linked to Iran. The Kurds, who don't seem to have strong feelings either way, have strong militias and weak Iranian influence. Here's a handy table:

Dawa: Shiite, no militia, Iranian-linked
SCIRI: Shiite, militia, Strongly Iranian linked
Sadr: Shiite, militia, weakly Iranian linked
Kurds: not Shiite, militia, weakly Iranian linked

You tell me where in the hell amongst those four groups you can select two (which would be required to have a parliamentary majority) without ties to Iran nor a militia.

The Iraqis are currently promising to send a bunch more troops into Baghdad to help us out, but again, this is the same bullshit they always feed us. They've literally been saying the exact same thing for approximately the last two years. Quoting e e cummings again:

Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"

It should come as no surprise that they are already backsliding, appointing an officer in charge of the troops who is completely unknown, bucking the choice we suggested. I do not think I am going too far out on a limb to suggest he'll be surprisingly ineffective, and will fail to meet all the benchmarks that we'll in turn fail to enforce. We can always try to stage a coup, but as I mentioned above, there is no one out there to meet our fanciful notions of what we want.

In the end, we have quagmire, a multilateral civil war that seems to be inevitable in the greater Arab and Moslem world, with US soldiers caught completely in the crossfire. Not just the soldiers currently there, but the ones we're going to send as the "surge" as well. All while the administration continues to pretend all is well, and the media recycles the same old spin.

We close with our good friend e e, because his poem about torture is so godawful prescient, and describes the situation of those that oppose this madness so well:

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.