Horror

Here is the direct link to a clip on CBS News' website (pointed out first by Josh Marshall, but without the direct link) shot by a film crew that happened to be filming proceedings at the Iraqi UN headquarters when the car bomb exploded. Warning: this is extremely graphic and disturbing footage, and if you find that sort of thing upsetting, you will be very, very upset at this. All the same, it's important to remember that as disturbed as you may be watching this roll, the troops are seeing this sort of thing every day, only on a slightly smaller scale. But every rocket-propelled grenade attack on an armored vehicle produces the same sort of chaotic, blood-spattered horror. Salam Pax was there an hour after the bombing. After witnessing the carnage he closes his post about it simply despairing, "we have plunged into darkness."

This is not a winnable war. We will not bring democracy, peace, or any other high-minded ideal to Iraq. We can't even bring water, power, or security reliably. And if we leave now, an all-out civil war will begin. We have taken a country that was marked by organized, psychotic violence and mediocre services and turned it into one marked by chaotic, psychotic violence and close to no services.

If Israel can't stop these sorts of bombings in the tiny West Bank, against a lightly armed populace with severe restrictions on its movement, what chance do we stand in sprawling Iraq, which positively bristles with weapons and has utterly porous borders? None. Bringing Iraq under even nominal control is going to take at least 3 times the number of soldiers we have on the ground now, and we don't have nearly that number of forces to spare, without massive National Guard call-ups or a draft, both of which, Bush must know, would result in an all-out revolt stateside. It would be a declaration of surrender in the upcoming election, and we all know that the election is the only real motivator for this administration.

I constantly heard arguments leading up to and during the invasion that if we didn't remove Hussein, then he would just stay in power until he died, to be replaced by one of his sons. I think the latter is false: Qusay was an ineffectual drunk and Udai was hated and arguably psychopathic. The idea that either of them could hold power for any amount of time is questionable at best. The death or fall of Saddam (and I don't think lifelong rule was in any way guaranteed, either) would likely have set off a series of palace coups and an ugly civil war, which is, of course, where Iraq is probably headed now, no matter what we do.

But at least then we wouldn't be stuck in the middle of it, having claimed responsibility for the entire horrific affair. Yesterday it was the UN headquarters. How long before we have another event like the Marines in Beirut in 1983? Granted, that was a MUCH softer target than we present in Iraq, but does anybody doubt that somebody, somewhere in Iraq is planning it right this moment?

I don't have any good solutions to offer. This administration fucked up in the worst possible manner with this invasion, and the flag-wavers fell right in line behind them, numbed to the realities of occupation from a steady diet of remote-control air wars and an unholy barrage of deception from our foreign policymakers. We cannot control this situation. We will not control this situation. How many people - Americans and Iraqis - are we willing to sacrifice before we admit it?

I'm desperately trying to find a silver lining in all of this, and the best I can come up with is that maybe it will serve as a slap in the face to Americans and force them to realize that even with the most powerful military in all of human history, we are not omnipotent. Perhaps we will begin using our defense department for defense rather than constant offense. Arrogantly using it for the latter has earned us bitter hatred from too much of the rest of the world. Salam Pax has a quote from Samuel Huntington as the tagline on his site:

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.

The latter have figured out how to match that power through asymmetrical methods of warfare. And yet, our dim-witted, faux-cowboy president just keeps swinging at this tarbaby, though the price is not being paid by him personally, but by your friends, relatives, and neighbors. Or their widows and their children. Not to mention 22 million Iraqis. End your vacation on your pretend ranch, get the hell back to the White House, and start working on extracting us from this nightmare. You have played right into bin Laden's hands. You have done exactly what he hoped you would do; better, even, since it's much easier for the jihadis to get into and move about Iraq than Afghanistan. Neither your military nor your god can produce a victory here.

Cut your losses now, you ignorant, arrogant, blood-soaked prick. Except they aren't your losses. When I see your daughters being fitted for artifical limbs or having their faces surgically reconstructed or being lowered into the ground in a flag-draped coffin, I'll believe they are your losses. I didn't think my esteem for you could sink any lower than it already was, but at this point, I wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.