October 12, 2006
IS SADDAM'S FUTURE ON AN UPTICK ?
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Who has gotten rid of Saddam? No one has gotten rid of Saddam.
As conventional wisdom begins to masticate a Tri-Part Iraq, which oddly was a plan first proffered forcibly by a Democrat, someone had better think through a couple of the moving parts and their all too likely consequences.
To wit, the Shia portion of the Tri-Part solution will come to rule with a component of Theocracy and a component of brutality, i.e. force under arms. The Kurds will continue with their existing autonomous political and military structure.
Arms and brutality will also, absolutely, have to be a component of the nascent Sunni Tri-Part element. What will this element look like? Who will be its leaders?
If this Tri-Part element is to be wholly Sunni it follows, as night follows day, that the previous in-control Bathist leaders, presently called insurgents, will gain or regain enormous sway.
If you wish to envision a scene of unimaginable incompetency and failure then simply follow the consequences of allowing a nationalistic Sunni entity to reform.
Saddam lives. He is now neutered. But if by some act of Kafkaesque incompetency the Sunnis reform politically he may again become a source of influence. If this transition from today's abject failure in Iraq to tomorrow's "Experiment To Win" plan is botched it may become politically impossible to execute Saddam.
That Saddam is no longer in power is the only surviving justification for the GOP's devastatingly inept and costly adventure in Iraq.
If Osama remains on the loose and it becomes impossible to execute Saddam the only word which will describe this administrations' foreign policy legacy is grotesque.
Who has gotten rid of Saddam? No one has gotten rid of Saddam.
As conventional wisdom begins to masticate a Tri-Part Iraq, which oddly was a plan first proffered forcibly by a Democrat, someone had better think through a couple of the moving parts and their all too likely consequences.
To wit, the Shia portion of the Tri-Part solution will come to rule with a component of Theocracy and a component of brutality, i.e. force under arms. The Kurds will continue with their existing autonomous political and military structure.
Arms and brutality will also, absolutely, have to be a component of the nascent Sunni Tri-Part element. What will this element look like? Who will be its leaders?
If this Tri-Part element is to be wholly Sunni it follows, as night follows day, that the previous in-control Bathist leaders, presently called insurgents, will gain or regain enormous sway.
If you wish to envision a scene of unimaginable incompetency and failure then simply follow the consequences of allowing a nationalistic Sunni entity to reform.
Saddam lives. He is now neutered. But if by some act of Kafkaesque incompetency the Sunnis reform politically he may again become a source of influence. If this transition from today's abject failure in Iraq to tomorrow's "Experiment To Win" plan is botched it may become politically impossible to execute Saddam.
That Saddam is no longer in power is the only surviving justification for the GOP's devastatingly inept and costly adventure in Iraq.
If Osama remains on the loose and it becomes impossible to execute Saddam the only word which will describe this administrations' foreign policy legacy is grotesque.
