Self-Fulfilling Prophesy

According to this Reuters article, eleven hostages have been seized in Iraq by militants:

Arab television Al Jazeera showed the three Japanese, kneeling with their eyes bound with white cloth and surrounded by masked men holding rifles and also sitting on the floor without their bindings and talking to their captors. The walls of the room were riddled with bullets.

It said they had been taken hostage by a hitherto unknown Iraqi group called Saraya al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Brigades).

"We tell you that three of your children have fallen prisoner in our hands and we give you two options -- withdraw your forces from our country and go home or we will burn them alive and feed them to the fighters," the group said.

"You have three days from the date of this tape's airing," it said in a statement, accusing Japan of betraying Iraqis by supporting the U.S.-led occupation.

The others are seven South Koreans who are members of an unspecified church group and a British national working as a contractor at a US Military Base. The report does not indicate what sort of work he did.

If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword. Our not-so-excellent-adventure in Iraq is reaping consequences far beyond the limited ability of Bush and his team. Not only is Iraq LOST, but the circumstances surrounding the defeat guarantees a less safe world. Iraq, for all of Saddam's vicious thuggery, was not an international terrorist threat. That's now changed.

Hostage taking means that, among other things, that there isn't a chance in hell that our version of reconstruction will work. Not that international capital raking in huge sums of money would help all that much, but hostage taking is indicative of an utter breakdown in security. No way will the Halliburtons or Bechtels move in for the kill without a reasonable assurance that their personnel are safe enough.

I doubt seriously that Team Bush has the slightest grasp of what's happening in Iraq. The "coalition" of the increasingly less willing--well, the US and British part--can still pack a punch, but more and more they will be irrelevant in the long term. The day to day reality for the Iraqi public will entail political control by those who are willing to assume such control--right now, the various militias and gangs that roam the cities. There is NO central authority. The CPA issues edicts from Extreme Makeover, Saddam's Palace Edition--where they add a 25 foot high concrete barrier--and the IGC is referred to as the Puppet Council. Who knows what the handover government will look like...

Billmon just posted this assessment from John Mearsheimer, which sounds a like a comment I posted over at Bad Attitudes. In summary, we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't.

The ONLY question left at this point is whether or not we continue the insane escalation--which will guarantee a nightmarish scenario at some point, be it in the Middle East or here in the US--or whether we TRY to do something to lessen the tensions. Our ONLY chance at this point is precisely what Senator Byrd said yesterday: seek the support of Iraq's neighboring countries. Maybe they can help lessen the tensions a bit, and pave the way for some sort of UN presence. The alternative is an Islamic nation forged in the defeat of the coalition. Neither one is particularly desirable, but chaos is even less desirable. It could potentially lead to a what was discussed last night on Nightline--the Armageddon Scenario, which is a plan to establish martial law right here should there be a significant terrorist attack. By the way, according to the report, the plan was implemented post 9/11 and continues to run, in the words of Richard Clarke (yes, THAT Richard Clarke) on "warm standby."

Welcome to the end of democracy. Now shop till you drop. That's an order.