IRAQ-- NO GOOD SOLUTIONS, ESPECIALLY NONE THAT INVOLVE BUSH AND HIS CRONIES

There is no "good solution" to the mess the Bush Regime has made in Iraq. The only acceptable one is the one put forward this morning in the Washington Post by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson: exit... now. The worst answers, of course, come from the pathetic bunch of pygmies™-- any of the lot who seek to personify the unimaginable third term of George W. Bush. Richardson isn't likely to get a chance to run against any of the pygmies so he aims his shot at Hillary, Obama and Edwards, the trifle too tepid and cautious Democratic front-runners.

Clinton, Obama and Edwards reflect the inside-the-Beltway thinking that a complete withdrawal of all American forces somehow would be "irresponsible." On the contrary, the facts suggest that a rapid, complete withdrawal-- not a drawn-out, Vietnam-like process-- would be the most responsible and effective course of action.

Those who think we need to keep troops in Iraq misunderstand the Middle East... Our troops have done everything they were asked to do with courage and professionalism, but they cannot win someone else's civil war. So long as American troops are in Iraq, reconciliation among Iraqi factions is postponed. Leaving forces there enables the Iraqis to delay taking the necessary steps to end the violence. And it prevents us from using diplomacy to bring in other nations to help stabilize and rebuild the country.

Bush, dazed, confused and-- some say-- drunk, in Australia, making a clown out of himself as usual, offered a solution that is already viewed by the overwhelming majority of Americans as failed and unsatisfactory: stay the course. Most of the pygmies seem to like that policy, although they would like to wrap it in nicer paper. None of the pygmies are viable candidates for the presidency. "None of the Above" beats them in every single Republican opinion poll.

Today's Post also carries a thoroughly unacceptable proposal from the remnants of the Iraq Study Group's advisors: five more years. I'm sure the next president, in all likelihood a female Democrat, won't be embracing that-- at least I want to be sure.

George Packer wrote the book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq which analyzes the Bush Regime's success in deceiving the American public into backing his dreams of Middle Eastern... well, whatever he planned to do there, from regime change to Armageddon. Packer's piece in the current New Yorker skips over all the wishful thinking and asks the real question of the day most politicians don't care to address, Planning For Defeat-- How should we withdraw from Iraq? The picture he paints of the situation emerging in Iraq is something like Lord of the Flies. Packer warns that next week's Petraeus farce will be utterly meaningless in the greater scheme of things.

The Petraeus-Crocker testimony is the kind of short-lived event on which the Administration has relied to shore up support for the war: the “Mission Accomplished” declaration, the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s capture, the transfer of sovereignty, the three rounds of voting, the Plan for Victory, the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Every new milestone, however illusory, allows the Administration to avoid thinking ahead, to the years when the mistakes of Iraq will continue to haunt the U.S.

The media have largely followed the Administration’s myopic approach to the war, and there is likely to be intense coverage of the congressional testimony. But the inadequacy of the surge is already clear, if one honestly assesses the daily lives of Iraqis. Though the streets of Baghdad are marginally less lethal than they were during 2006, sixty thousand Iraqis a month continue to leave their homes, according to the International Organization for Migration, joining the two million who have become refugees and the two million others displaced inside Iraq. The militias, which have become less conspicuous as they wait out the surge, are nevertheless growing in strength, as they extend their control over neighborhoods like Ahmed’s. In the backstreets, the local markets, the university classrooms, and other realms beyond the reach of American observers or American troops, there is no rule of law, only the rule of the gun. The lives of most Iraqis are dominated by a complex array of militias and criminal gangs that are ruthlessly competing with one another, and whose motives for killing are more often economic or personal than religious or ideological. A recent report by the International Crisis Group urged the American and British governments to acknowledge that their “so-called Iraqi partners, far from building a new state, are tirelessly working to tear it down.”

Packer's piece is a bit more philosophical and morally-oriented than the emotional and manipulative trash presented day after day by the traditional media. He goes beyond the Bush Regime's insistence that they can still win in Iraq, even after they are banished from office in disgrace. Packer asks the tough questions about how we got where we are-- and how we utterly, perhaps irreparably, wrecked the fiber of Iraqi society in the process-- and what we are obligated and capable of doing about it now. Blustering Republicans, coupled with weak and divided Democrats, may allow the Bush Regime to keep their pointless, even counterproductive, war going until Bush wanders off to his disgrace (despite the virtual destruction of a superb American military inherited by a Bush Regime that despised, feared and misused it).

Bush's pigheadedness and unwillingness to face the reality of his own abysmal shortcomings as a leader is leading to a virtual sabotage of the options available for a legitimate president elected in 2008. Responsible Republican adults-- and I don't mean the Cheneys or Rumsfelds or any Neocons-- need to force Bush to compromise... now. Otherwise the "war will end in a precipitate, chaotic flight." Is that what Bush wants?

Preparing a judicious withdrawal from Iraq will demand the integrated effort of the whole government, not just under this President but under the next one as well. “You just cannot pretend that the Iraq war never happened and everything can go back to how it was before,” the former Embassy official told me. “The status quo before 2003 no longer exists. We have introduced fundamental new disequilibriums into one of the most sensitive parts of the globe. How do you contain it?” He added, “People have to start thinking about these things-- small study groups with military, State, and intelligence people sketching out what are the core interests on a regional level, and working back from that to discuss some options. If that’s been done, I don’t know about it.”

Bush's current policies and short-term fixes almost guaranteed to lead to further catastrophe, warlordism, sectarian war, dissolution of any pretense of an Iraqi state. None of his plans have worked and none ever will, particularly not after he is living in Texas trying to memorize speeches to give on the rubber chicken circuit. An American officer in Iraq scoffs at the planning. "The reality of Iraq is bound to defeat the fantasies of Washington, the officer suggested. 'What about the enemy, man?' he said. 'Are we going to ask them to conform to our plan?'”

The war was born in the original sins of deceptive salesmanship, divisive politics, and wishful thinking about the aftermath. The bitterness of that history continues to undermine American interests in Iraq and the Middle East today. President Bush will have his victory at any cost, with one eye on his next Churchillian speech and the other on his place in history, leaving the implementation of his war policy to an Administration that works at cross purposes with itself, promising freedom and delivering rubble. The opposition is plainly eager to hang a defeat around his neck and move on from what it always regarded as Bush’s war. Before the U.S. can persuade the world to unite around a shared responsibility for Iraq, Americans will have to do it first.