excerpts.

 Which is stupider the Biden-Brownback Iraqi partition bill or the Leiberman-Kyl blind rage run-up to a war on Iran bill?

All the throngs of readers of this prolific blog will recognize, I find it the height of hubris for our domestic pandering Neanderthals, Congress, to start pretending they’re aware of or anything north of Minnesota or south of Galveston Island.  For these people, the rest of the world is one big photo op and list topper for the last few years, the prize paparazzi joint, has been the horrifically dangerous Iraq, the one place these people can’t get into fast enough so they can decry how quickly our troops should be getting out.

Add to this the almost universal and unexplainable zeitgeist of hatred spewing out towards Iran this week coupled with the handjobbery and backpattery from all sides, from the president of Columbia University, to Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich and Socialist radio personalities on Air America, all falling over to up the count of how many times they can say “evil” and “Ahmedinejad” with the same breath. 

Literally everyone is trying to point the finger at someone else, preferably someone of the brownish persuasion, about who’s to blame for Iraq – it’s either the Iraqis themselves or their neighbors who are causing our boys and our country to fail – not in any way us.  Introspecting or discussing what’s within our power to change is liable to be branded either “planning to fail” or not wanting to succeed.  Try getting a radio talk show host to define what “success” looks like in Iraq without rehashing Bush’s vague “stable democracy that supports America.”

With General Petraus stating that Iran is waging a proxy war against us, it’s opened the door for a bipartisan photo op of unprecedented damage, garnering 73 votes in the Senate for the Leiberman-Kyl bill that states we should go ahead with a covert war against Iran.  Let’s not bother questioning whether this is a consequence of short term policy decisions on either side or whether there’s any implications beyond this week’s Iran hating press cycle.  First off, we should acknowledge that Iraq’s a mess of corruption and multiple attitudes towards all insurgents of all stripes and that there are any number of organizations that would fund combatants and supply arms to those combatants, from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Israel, yes, Iran, and geez, guess who, us (ref. all the dead Anbar leaders).  It’s myopic and retarded to think that Iraq’s neighbors aren’t going to try to influence Iraq in a multitude of ways and, eventually, one of those ways will blow up or fly at supersonic speeds and kill one of our boys.  Second, if intentionally killing one of our soldiers were a cause for war, we would’ve attacked Israel long, long ago.

With the popular outrage of the progress of the war in Iraq and the general apathy and ignorance towards the Middle East in this country, the desire for having our troops get out of Iraq is growing. One of the more stupid ideas has been peddled by Senator Biden for a few years now and it’s a “weak federal government, strong ethno-regional state government, and equal oil distribution” plan.  In the historical categories of occupation, it falls somewhere in the annals of colonial strategies, something like divide-and-conquer but with a twist of ostrich – run away and hide your head from the consequences.  It’s clear that the heyday of colonialism is long past, yet Biden thinks it’s World War 1 again, where the west has the power to divide a country via our perception, like a modern day Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, of their ethnic differences – whee, he figured out that there are 3 (never mind all the others) types of brown people! – and then expect things to work out.  It’s also clear, historically, that if you want to do divide-and-conquer you have to have enforcement, like the British did during the Raj (twist your Google Earth centered on Baghdad a few longitudes to the left) with their governors and strict rule enforcement.  Also never mind that we’ve already done our version of it, with the Coalition Provisional Authority and L. Paul Bremer.  It takes a lot of gall to suggest a colonial model – something we as Americans have always shunned – and then follow it up with “it’ll all just work out.”

I can’t imagine anything stupider than our domestics thinking their beltway ideas have any effect beyond our borders.