Old Hickory's Weblog

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

Pat Lang, formerly an analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, in Over the Edge Sic Semper Tyrannis blog 07/12/06, writes about the implications of the recent escalation in violence in Iraq over the last several days:

I think this is it.  This weekend we crossed over a divide into territory where reprisal is its own reward and death is the automatic price of ancient group enmity in Iraq.  It appears to me that random executions based on the mere PROBABILITY that a name indicates communal membership have now become the norm in "sectarian violence".  Further reprisals will follow, amd then further reprisals and then further reprisals.  It will go "all the way down" as Friedman said of the civil war in Lebanon.  (That was before the world became flat [a satirical stab at Friedman's more clueless later work])  It is fortunate that we are not facing actual civil war in Iraq. (irony)  We insisted in our vision of a "brave new world" to come in the Middle East that such outmoded distinctions as group identity would lose effectiveness and would quickly die out in a universal joy brought on by an abundance of individual rights.  (you can almost hear the "Ode to Joy" in the background.

...  Iraq is going to bleed like a river and howl like a hyena, and it is our government's fault.

In the midst of this emerging chaos we will have the US armed forces still dutifully trying to comprehend, still trying to do its duty, still agonizing over unspeakable crimes done by its children. (my emphasis)

This is why Bush's "stay the course" approach is so untenable.  The "course" we're on is a descent into more and more destructive civil war there on top of the insurgency.  The next qualitative leap in the disaster would be regional war.

It's worth noticing that the current wave of violence in Baghdad is coming during what is supposed to have been a major crackdown in the capital by US and Iraqi forces.

The Republicans are running this year on their More Of The Same policy in Iraq.  Only if we define the "same" in dynamic terms as continued worsening of the situation can we say with high assurance that More Of The Same is even possible.

Steve Gilliard has a succinct evaluation of the present situation:  "Something is going to give and before Labor Day."