Civil war

So, now, Iraqis are poised on the brink of civil war, if it has not already started. And America has two choices.

We can stay and try to do the impossible: hold the two, three, many sides apart, supporting an Iraqi “government” that now possesses precisely zero battalions capable of fighting alone.

Or we can leave, and watch mass slaughter, beginning with the deaths of every Iraqi who was naïve enough to believe our promises and offer us assistance.

Everywhere we look, we see America weakened: everywhere we turn, we’re viewed as the “paper tiger” Red China used to call us back in the 1960s, manacled by the catastrophic destruction of both our military and our moral authority.

These are the choices George Bush has given us, the corner he has painted us into. George Bush and his vast apparatus of ideologues, apologists, corrupt contributors, and phony moralists. There is nobody else to blame: Bush’s cabal got everything it wanted, ran this war and its aftermath exactly as it chose, with zero accountability, zero openness, and zero honesty.

Now, as Bush moves inexorably towards the war he wishes to wage against Iran, he must stand quietly in the background and allow others to make the case. Even Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Rove know this: in the age of Bush, the world views America’s words as worse than worthless.

At what point do we hold these people accountable? A sane country would throw them out of office today, and see to it than none of them ever served again.