Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Call me crazy, call me stupid

In fact, you can call me sick and cynical and things like that, but get this:

You know how I've been saying (posting) repeatedly for years that the continued strife in Iraq is just what Bush wants, because it perpetuates his power and allows the US to remain there, build bases, exercise its dominion over the area. (A corollary being that Osama bin Laden wants it too, because it serves his purpose of fomenting and training his functionaries.) Well, I still believe that's what Bush/Cheney/Rummie and the NeoCon bureaucrats had in mind to begin with, for the first couple of years after the invasion.

But now I think they've had enough, and now earnestly want the battling and bickering between the Iraqis to end because it's becoming an albatross for Republican candidates in the upcoming Congressional elections.

Well, too bad, gang. You've gotten on a horse you can't get off. At this rate, with mosques being bombed, with Sunnis and Shias attacking each other daily, with the Iraq government unable to come up with a cohesive administration, there ain't no end in sight to that nation's unsettled state, and all the reconstruction and investment in the world ain't gonna change that, certainly not in time for the midterm elections in the US, and not even for the presidential elections in 2008.

Well, the cynical part is this. I want the strife to continue now. I want the Iraqis to go through the same turmoil that other democracies have had to endure in order to prevail. France? Ten years of hell, followed by empire and finally relative peace and freedom. The US? Fifteen years between the earliest stirrings and adoption of the constitution, with the War of 1812 as a capper and a bloody civil war to follow. Mexico, Latin America, South America, Africa, Asia--name a nation (besides, maybe, Canada) where the transition to cohesion and democracy was other than turbulent and protracted.

Why do I want this? In large part so that we can get Bush and his gang of warmongers out of office, but also because the situation in the Middle East can no longer be papered over by our Western ways. When the Brits drews the lines in the sand and created various "nations" after World War I, it gave no regard to the aspirations or allegiances of the indigenous people. In Iraq, for example, it lumped together Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds and Assyrians, and told them they were a nation. Well, now we know better. The Arabs have no historical connection to the Kurds, indeed, have strong antipathy; the Sunni Muslims have strong objection to core beliefs of the Shia Muslims, which have been exacerbated by the U.S. occupation; the Assyrians and Turkmen have their own allegiances in the north and northwest of Iraq, and on and on.

Yeah, if there's to be a semblance of cohesion and cooperation in Iraq, it's going to have to come from the Iraqis, not from extortionate pronouncements by the occupiers, and not in a matter of months. Unfortunately, for Bush and the NeoCons, not in a matter of years, either.

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