AMAZING!

"The amazing thing is that we are being
taken over basically by a cult, eight or
nine neoconservatives."
-- Seymour Hersh (at start of Iraq war)

"Every day, George W. Bush asks young
Americans to die in defense of an Iraq
that has ceased to exist (if it ever did) in
the hearts and minds of Iraqis. What
Iraqis believe in are sectarian or tribal
Iraqs -- a Shi'ite Iraq, or a Sunni Iraq, an
antonymous Kurdish Iraq state, an Iraq
where Grand Ayatollah Sistani or Moqtada
al-Sadr or some other chieftain holds sway.
These are the Iraqs for which Iraqis are
willing to die. Whatever their merits and
shortcomings, they are at least rooted in
reality. These Iraqs have adherents and
territory. The Iraq for which Bush compels
Americans to fight has neither."
-- Harold Meyerson in Wash. Post 5/30/07
THAT'S AMAZING!

Meanwhile, in the "why do they hate us?"
department: "We have destroyed the most
viable and the most modern Arab country
in the Middle East. We destroyed the Iraqi
state, loathsome as its leadership was. Now
we are also destroying the country -- 24
million people, two million of whom have
been driven out of their homes, and about
half a million of whom are no longer living
today because of what happened. . . And
then on top of it, there is the Islamophobic
rhetoric that Bush has fostered, and the
irresponsible plunge of the mass media
and the entertainment industry into terror
sensationalism with a strong racist,
religious tone to it, resulting in a feeling
of real resentment."
-- Zbigniew Brzezinski in The American
Prospect (TAP) June, 2007

"Iraq's three major ethnic and sectarian
groups have failed to reach compromises
on important issues, not because they are
now unwilling but because they are unable
to do so. Shia, Kurdish, and Sunni politicians
cannot reconcile positions that are funda-
mentally irreconcilable, and no measure
of U. S. exhortation or coercion will change
that reality." -- Flynt Leverett, TAP, June, '07

And why are the positions irreconcilable?
The Kurds are not Arabs, do not speak
Arabic, and have never considered them-
selves part of Iraq. Nor do they want to
be. They want their own nation, and will
cooperate with anyone (Shia or Sunni) that
will help them get there. They are friendly
with the U. S. and Israel, and will let us
park troops there, if we want to get them
out of the killing zone. We are too dumb,
so far, to do that.

Iraq's Arab Sunnis (the Kurds are also
Sunnis, but largely secular ones) despise
the Shia, over whom they have long
ruled, and will die (are dying) rather than
be ruled by them. Fundamentalist Sunnis
regard the Shia as apostates, and Muslim
law (Shariah) requires that apostates be
put to death. So a lot of them are busy
at that job now. That, of course, requires
retribution from the Shia, who don't
know a lot about democracy, but do
understand that the majority rules. They
are not inclined to show a lot of charity
to the Sunnis that keep blowing up their
mosques and market places, killing, as
they do, thousands of women, children,
and elderly.

Our congress doesn't get it at all, and
keeps believing the adminstration's
assurances that the weak, thoroughly
corrupt Shia-run government in Iraq
will, any day now, do what it has no
intention of, let alone lack of ability to
do, and that is to kiss and make up with
their Sunni bretheren. It's not happening!
Not, at least, until hell freezes over.

Biden and Brzezinsky, and Peter Galbraith
are probably right in advocating a tri-
partite split of Iraq along ethnic and
sectarian lines. Sad but true.

More later.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net
a half million