Whiskey Bar

Amazing piece about Iraq at Whiskey Bar (thanks for the pointer from Sharp Sand) which despite being written in late May sounds just as timely as anything else on the subject this week.

Imagine that – the New Iraq® has become a den of vicious partisans desperately grasping for power and patronage. It looks like American-style democracy has taken root in Baghdad after all.

Messier Than Manchukuo

Either way, the hope that passing a pretend sovereignty to a notional interim government somehow would miraculously erase the taint of infidel occupation from our Mesopotamian nation-building venture is looking more and more, ah, threadbare. Replacing one group of Pentagon-backed exile stooges with another group of CIA-backed exile stooges isn’t exactly a transition calculated to win public support and international recognition for the new regime.

Which means the situation on the ground post-June 30 is likely to be identical to the situation on the ground pre-June 30 – except worse, since at least some deference will have to be paid to Iraq’s theoretical sovereignty. Unlike the Japanese Army, which could manipulate its Manchukuo puppet with a relatively free hand, the U.S. military will still be operating in the full glare of the TV lights, with CNN and Al Jazeera on hand to document every twitch of injured national pride, and report every complaint by every Iraqi politician about American imperial heavyhandedness.

By the time this is over, I predict a lot of Army generals are going to be looking back fondly at the way their predecessors were allowed to fight the war in Vietnam.

And, assuming the "transition" goes off more or less as planned, what will have been gained – other than a couple of marginally useful 30-second campaign spots for the Bush-Cheney campaign? All the blood and treasure and international credibility sacrificed over the past year will have been spent simply to end up roughly where America stood in Vietnam in 1963 – desperately trying to prop up a corrupt, quasi-colonial regime with virtually no domestic legitimacy.

I note with some sadness, but with complete understanding that Whiskey Bar has decided to turn OFF comments since there are so many idiots, flamers and trolls wasting the author's precious time. I can certainly understand that.