Iraqis Agree On One Thing

Well, let's give credit where credit is due: this administration has finally succeeded in bringing together the three major Iraqi ethnic groups and getting them to find some point of agreement. That point? That killing U.S. soldiers isn't really so bad. Take it away, Salah Nasrawi from the AP:

Leaders of Iraq's sharply divided Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis called Monday for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in the country and said Iraq's opposition had a "legitimate right'' of resistance.

Sure, they say that terrorism wrong, but take a look at who has to die in order to move an act from "resistance" to "terrorism.": "killing and kidnapping targeting Iraqi citizens and humanitarian, civil, government institutions, national resources and houses of worships." Did they just forget that soldiers are not immortal? No, as Nasrawi reports, "In Egypt, the final communique's attempt to define terrorism omitted any reference to attacks against U.S. or Iraqi forces. Delegates from across the political and religious spectrum said the omission was intentional." Jesus Christ. My dog could run a war better than this administration and she spends 20 hours a day sleeping. I could run a war better than this administration and I'm a hippie liberal commie who opposes this war with every bone in my body. Because here's the thing. You cannot half-ass your way through a war. You can't say "oh, well, we're going to take down this dictator and liberate these people in their own country," because people do not want you sticking your nose into their business*. Even if they don't like their evil dictator, they don't want someone else coming in and telling them how to take care of shit. If you are going to go to war, you've got to be intent on smashing the shit out of the people you're at war with. You can't have some kind of fucked-up idea that you can go to war with a government and not with the people. You have to be prepared to be merciless. And, I'm sorry, but this is exactly why the current administration sucks at warmongering. The truly scary people, who get that there's no room for mercy and acquiescence in the midst of a fucking war, people, a war that we are in right now (argh!), are cowards who are hiding behind some kind of compassionate conservative idea that we can liberate the people of Iraq** and all the troops will be heroes and that heroism will rub off on an administration that barely knows what bravery looks like. So, every time you turn around, it seems like this administration is almost purposefully making things as difficult for our troops on the ground while at the same time deflecting criticism of the war effort by suggesting that any criticism of the administration hurts the troops. Never mind that letting the people who are supposed to be on our side in the country we're at war in decide that our forces are fair targets hurts our troops a hell of a lot more. What these folks need is a simple checklist for war-mongering: 1. Have you been attacked by said country? 2. If not, does that country have resources vital to your economy? 3. Would you benefit from being in direct control of said resources? 4. Will your allies understand? 5. If not, can you bribe them into understanding with the resources you're soon to come into? 6. Will the countries neighboring the country you're about to invade understand? 7. If not, are they sufficiently afraid of you? 8. Are you prepared to do whatever it takes to win control of said country? 9. Is your army prepared to go to war? 10. Do they have the training and equipment they need? 11. Say you get over there and you decide you don't really want that country, are you prepared to keep your people in power until the first generation of resistance to you is dead?*** 12. Do you have the support of your public? Since the administration asked itself none of these questions and seems unprepared to actually, you know, invade and occupy Iraq, but instead is doing invasion and occupation lite, I think we should just cut our losses and get the hell out of there. *Right? One can take an army into France and deliver them from the Germans because France was attacked by outside forces. But no one's stupid enough to say that we liberated the Germans from Hitler, because everyone understands that Germany had the leader it thought it wanted, and even now people are like "Fucking-a, Germany, what the fuck is wrong with you? Were you insane?" No one is stupid enough to see the Nazis as Hitler's victims. **This actually gets right to the heart of my objection to torturing people. Of course, I don't think we should torture people because it doesn't work. But I also don't think we should torture people if we're trying to run a "moral" war--which is, at its heart, what a war of liberation claims to be. Well, we cannot run a moral war (if such a creature exists) through immoral means. ***This is the part that makes me most irate. Why are we handing power over to the friends of our enemies? Give the country back to people who cannot remember what it was like before we got there.