I've been on the fence about Iraq trying to make up my mind about our "war". Watching Meet the Press today, I have finally come to a conclusion. Today I, Vaitkadamas, will go out on a limb with a bold prediction:

The war is over. We lost.

The next months will turn into years and we will continue to fight (and die) over there, but the outcome has been determined. Sectarian violence will continue to worsen until it reaches full blown civil war and the county will eventually break up into three pieces. Sure we got Saddam, but in his place we destabilized the entire region, which will see increasing terrorism and decreasing stability as Iraq continues to be a lawless breeding ground for terrorists.

Nice job, George. You really showed your dad how easy it was to take Iraq!

mistakes were made

As I have said in the past, the mistakes of this President have been legendary.

• We didnt use enough troops to create or maintain peace.
• We didnt raise a draft to get enough troops in the first place or raise taxes to pay for the war.
• We tried to use combat troops for police work.
• We didnt create a plan that used the oil for the good of all Iraqis.
• We (repeatedly) insulted our historic European allies and the United Nations and told the world we could go it alone.
• We failed to position ourselves right from the start as helping the country and instead appeared to be helping ourselves (to oil) and Israel.

But as McCain said this morning, war's are unpredictable and mistakes are always made in war. I totally accept that as true. The mistakes are just symptoms of the real reasons we failed is Iraq:

1. The President's team just didnt understand the complexity in the region.
2. The President is unwilling (or unable) to adapt.

Complexity

The debate before the war showed how little we understood what we were getting into.

Arabs are not Persians are not Kurds. Shia's are not Sunni's are not Suffi's. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, and Iran are not democracies (even Israel is a questionable Democracy). Moreover, none of these governments are governments as we understand it here in the USA. In all of these countries, religious organizations provide government services to the people while political parties are discouraged if not prohibited.

None of these complex issues were really discussed before the war. All we talked about was a "war on terror", WMD's, and being "liberators".

The sad thing is that experts in our country, even in our government, knew about all these issues and understood them, but the boys in charge just didnt want to hear it. We were going to be liberators in the street, we would get the 2^nd largest oil reserves in the world, we would do what daddy didnt do in 1991...

Our leaders refused to see the issues and as a result, we weren't prepared for them. Ooops. (Oh yeah, we already saw what happens when dictatorships suddenly disappear when the Soviet Union collapsed and anarchy ruled Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, so we had no excuse for not being prepared in Iraq. Bush went to Harvard AND Yale - surely he passed at least a few classes when he was there?)

One of the main issues we didnt deal with was the power of religious militias, an issue that came up just recently in Lebanon. Countries in this region are not liberal democracies like the USA. Political organizations are discouraged if not prohibited. In Iraq and elsewhere the only groups that are allowed to organize are religious groups and those groups do a lot more than potlucks and bingo night.

These religious groups provide the kind of services we in the USA expect the government to do. They provide food, shelter, education and protection. When we removed Saddam the dictator, the only organized groups in the country were the religious groups and they quickly armed themselves and became tiny governments within themselves.

These militias are the real government in Iraq and they continue to get stronger not weaker. We have done nothing to disarm them in Iraq. The idea of a central Iraqi government is a sham unless it can control the militias, disarm them or stand against them. (Read some articles about Lebanon.)

stay the course

As I said before, shit happens and people make mistakes. The important thing is that smart people adapt. They admit mistakes and they make changes and they move forward. None of these things rhyme with "stay the course".

For political or perhaps personal reasons, the President and the Republican party have decided that admitting mistakes is tantamount to admitting defeat so they are ensuring our defeat by refusing to adapt. The President himself famously said that he has never had a regret or wished he could have done something dfferent (I suspect this is one of the pleasant side-effects of his alcoholism.)

We have a failed strategy in Iraq and since the President wont adapt, we will fail, spending over $100B US Tax dollars and losing thousands of lives in the process. (3,000 Iraqi's were murdered just in July this year.) The US election in November will play out along predictable (and meaningless) political arguments about supporting troops and staying the course ("why do you hate America?"). The problems in the region will continue until they explode in civil war or we get a new President with new policies.

It would be nice to think that the American voters will see through all this and demand reasonable change but I doubt it. As things get worse, people will cling harder and harder to their initial positions and get angrier and angrier about the "unfair bias" of the facts.

President Bush wanted to go down in history; It seems pretty likely that he will, taking all of us with him.