Three-Legged Race

Note: Blogger is acting like shit again. Imagine that.

If this posts at all, it'll be amazing.

Juan Cole notes the "fiasco" in the new Iraqi parliament while taking time to mention three disturbing trends: first, ordinary Iraqi citizens are nervous, i.e., sick and tired of the chaos (who wouldn't be?), second, the insurgents are showing a surprising ability to disable Abrams tanks (the rear of the vehicle is vulnerable), and finally, that Iraqi prisons are stuffed to the gills--well, in that respect, maybe some "American-style" democracy has finally found its way to the Fertile Crescent.

Meanwhile, Billmon, who last week likened WRITING his blog to mainlining, is once again providing READERS like me the equivalent. In this post, he nicely summarizes the problem facing the US at present: the IRAQI government (if it can ever form itself) has the United States over a barrel:

Rooting around on Google yesterday looking for clips on the negotiations over the new Iraqi government (It's almost ready! Any day now! Really!) I came across this bit of semi-official propaganda, courtesy of US News & World Report, which explains how the mighty USA hopes to control its Shia-dominated client state once the new government (We're close! Honest!) is up and running:

U.S. officials in Baghdad said they are prepared to play diplomatic hardball – including the threat to withhold billions in promised reconstruction aid – to ensure that Iraq's political newbies stick to the game plan for a democratic, pluralistic, federalist, and unified state. "The Iraqis are free to choose whatever vision of Iraq they want. That's entirely up to them," says a diplomat in Baghdad. "It's entirely up to us, the United States, who we choose to support. We can use these funds elsewhere."

Now “newbies” is a pretty laughable choice of nouns to describe men who have spent decades in the deadly whirlwind of Middle Eastern politics – the prototypical war of the all against the all – and not only survived but emerged on top. It would be interesting to see how long Bill Frist or Denny Hastert would last in that particular jungle armed only with their teleprompters and their power ties...

The truth is that the Bush administration is now captive to the Shia coalition, not the other way around – just as earlier administrations became captive to a series of South Vietnamese presidents, from Diem to Thieu, who stubbornly refused to sacrifice their own narrow interests to serve an American-made strategy for winning the war (or, in the end, for losing it gracefully.)...

Failure in Iraq, as we have been reminded again and again, is not an option. So the idea the Bushies would deliberately pull the financial rug out from under the only viable alternative to chaos – and consolidation of a radical jihadist sanctuary in the Sunni Triangle – is absurd.

It’s not just the fact that a large, and growing, share of the promised reconstruction funds have been redirected to security work – like shoring up the walls of our Fort Apache in the heart of Baghdad or building bomb proof mess halls at US military bases. That kind of spending will be necessary as long as the military occupation lasts, no matter how disobedient the new Iraqi government becomes.

But even if the administration was ready and able to pour billions into Iraq's reconstruction – and millions more into the Swiss bank accounts of favored Iraqi politicians – a threat to withdraw that largesse would be about as credible as a threat by the Shia leadership to demand the withdrawal of US troops. Both sides know these things aren’t going to happen.

Exactly. Which means that our ridiculous adventure in Iraq will lurch along for a while before eventually landing with an ugly crash and thud. The options available are incredibly limited--and there's an ongoing insurgency that shows NO sign of letting up regardless of who manages to cobble together any sort of "working" government. Right now, any outcome that the US could conceivable refer to as a semblence of "victory" will result in the equivalent of a Saddam Hussein-like government. In other words, a gigantic circle-jerk at the cost of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Even "liberal" social programs weren't that kind of drain...