Little Man Bleeding

by Molly Ivors

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Thank fucking christ, they've found someone to blame!

Republican John Warner, one of the Senate's most respected voices on military affairs, fleshed out his surprise view expressed last week that Bush should undertake a limited troop withdrawal from Iraq by Christmas.

US soldiers "have performed magnificently ... but the government under the leadership of Maliki and other Iraqi leaders have failed to put the other part of that partnership in place," he told NBC television.

Democratic Senator Jack Reed echoed Warner in arguing that the Maliki government had failed on key political benchmarks such as an oil revenues law and reconciliation between Iraq's warring sects.

"I think we have a right to be critical of a government that is not doing what a government must do -- protect its own people, make difficult decisions that in the long run will provide for the safety and security of the Iraqi people," Reed said on Fox News Sunday.

Aside from the clearly psychotic behavior of any Democrat appearing on Fox News Sunday, American politicians bloviating about what they do and don't have a "right" to be "critical" of vis-a-vis the Iraqi clusterfuck is laughable.

I have no doubt that al-Maliki could have performed better. And yet, somehow I really doubt that he, like Hitler or Stalin or even George W. Bush, is alone responsible for the mess his nation is in. Yet why should he have achieved anything at all? For years, we and he have been assured that more soldiers and contractors, more clapping, more digging, was the answer. It was ours to win or lose; Iraqi politics were a second- or third-level consideration, if that. This turn-on-a-dime race to place the whole thing at his feet reeks of an American propaganda exercise designed to absolve us from any responsibility for the escalating civil war.

After all, it's almost September, and we know what that means! We've got to protect our phony baloney jobs, gentlemen!

As it happens, I do believe that a political rather than a military solution is the sole hope for some sort of balanced peace, and obviously the political structure is not in place to achieve that. But whose fault is that? The purple-finger people? The people who voted in what they thought were their best interests? Or the crowds of twelve-year-old bureaucrats who treated Iraq as their own personal sampo, determined to remake it as some freakish cross between Gilead, Colorado Springs, and the Marianas Islands?

All I'm saying is that if I were al-Maliki, I'd wonder what the fuck was expected of me.

Next, they lock al-Maliki in a box with a wire mother.

Comments

[SteveB]

Here's a question: if you had to choose between: 1) a complete US withdrawal from Iraq, in which all the wrong people get blamed, and none of the right people are held accountable, or: 2) a US occupation that never ends, which would you choose?

And sorry, there's no third choice.

[infoshaman]

SteveB,

Thanks to our representative democracy, I vote for 1) and get 2).

Just as in the case of Alberto Gonzales, I voted for 1) holding his feet to the fire and get 2) Chuck Schumer (AKA Senator Hobson) suggesting that Michael "Waste Deep in the Big Easy" Chertoff might not be a terrible replacement as AG.

[Hogan]

We've got to protect our phony baloney jobs, gentlemen!

This message has been paid for by Republicans for Le Petomane.

[Righteous Bubba]

surprise view expressed last week that Bush should undertake a limited troop withdrawal

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where could such a bolt from the blue have originated?

[Candymarl]

All of the above Johnson's are right.
Wait. That didn't come out right.