Just in case anyone out there is actually buying the spin put out by the Cheney White House about Iraq and the "surge" working and brighter days to come, you should have a look at
this roundtable discussion of Middle East experts put together by RollingStone magazine. A quote.
What happens to the civil war between Iraq's Sunni and Shia Arabs when we leave?
Juan Cole: The civil war will go on for five or ten years -- that's inevitable. But the best-case scenario is, at the end of it they find a way to come back together as a nation-state, like Lebanon did in 1989.
Rosen: People are talking about a reconciliation process, but Iraqi Shias don't want to compromise with the Sunnis. They don't have to. There's going to be a genocide of Sunnis in Baghdad. The Shia have the numbers to do it; they can absorb all the Sunni car bombs it takes. The Americans aren't capable of stopping it; they can't tell a Sunni from a Shia. The best you can hope for is that it doesn't spill into the neighboring countries.
McPeak: You have to hope that Iraq devolves into a federal state with three strong regional governments. But that has its downsides: The Turks would go berserk. They would see Kurdistan as a base for the Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey, which has bedeviled them like the IRA in Ireland or the Basques in Spain. And if Iraq devolves into three separate "stans," then it's going to be pretty tough for Sunnistan not to provide a retirement home for Al Qaeda agents. It's got warts all over it -- but among the "don't call my baby ugly" possibilities in this world, that looks the prettiest.
And those are the
best case scenarios. Really. The expected and worst case scenarios are astonishingly far into "can't unshit the bed" territory. Of course none of this will change the denial and "clap louder" strategies the media unquestioningly passes on from government officials, despite the fact that every opinion poll finds that solid majorities of Americans want to end the Iraqi occupation and bring home the troops ASAP.
Kind of on the same topic,
The 300 had a
enormous debut last weekend, pulling in $70m, breaking debut records for the month, and vastly exceeding expectations. The movie is about a small group of Spartans who defend their homeland by dying nobly in battle against a the vastly superior, more technologically-advanced invading army from the world's strongest empire, who wants to overrun their homeland, depose their leaders, and rule them from afar. The parallels to the current situation in Iraq seem obvious, until you learn that some pro-war types are getting behind the movie because they see the Spartans are like the Americans.
Um, what?
What part of a smaller force, outgunned, outnumbered, defending their homeland against uber-powerful foreign invaders applies to the US military in Iraq? The comparison becomes even more laughable if you consider that the Spartan king fights and dies with his soldiers, and compare that to how George "Daddy's friends got me into the Texas Air National Guard" Bush and Dick "five student deferments and a baby nine months after those ran out" Cheney spent their formative years during the Vietnam War.
I honestly thought, some months ago when I heard the plot of the film, that it would be protesed by pro-war types who would say it was glorifying the Iraqi
resistance terrorists. Sure, the invading army in the film is Persian, but it's not like they're invading Detroit; it's 2000 years ago, in Greece! But hey, if you were dumb enough to still think the Iraqi was going well, while hoping for a new war with Iran to change our luck, you'd be grasping at any metaphorical and cinematic straws you could find too.
Labels: iraq, the 300
