It Could Get Worse Dept.

Here's one prediction I fear might come true and sure hope doesn't:

I understand that Iraq doesn't offer many pleasant options right now. 'Stay the course' died years ago, we can't build up troops if we don't have them and the various ways of mitigating our current nightmare run up against the problem that we are governed by people who cannot or will not do the right thing. We might as well admit that our homebaked plans (for example) are just so much intellectual wankery. The president is emotionally incapable of admitting the depth of our problem and darth veep will veto any plan that can't be pushed out the rear of a C-130 transport.

In that light I think that we should recognize this idea of actively promoting the ethnic partition of Iraq for what it is a horrible, debatably effective plan (the implementation seems guaranteed to produce tragic screwups on a massive scale) that will never happen. My feeling is that Iraq will play out just like the 'preparations' for insurgency did. For political reasons withdrawal will be treated as a naughty word, stifling discussion and heading off planning until it becomes absolutely unavoidable. Then when the light finally goes on we will have a chaotic bugout with huge, avoidable losses of men and materiel.

As far as putting a date on B-day, manpower and equipment shortages won't let us go on for too many more years. Or we could bomb Iran. In that case B-day would come approximately one week later, with much dynamiting of stuff that can't be airlifted out. I would love to be proved wrong, but if there is another likely path out of there I just don’t see it.