Elections seemed to go well in Iraq the other day, and it seems this Maliki (Like Obama, clearly another Hawaiian.) guy seems to be amassing more power and public goodwill. The news is better from Iraq. You won’t see me going there for vacation anytime soon, and Presidents still need to fly in unannounced, but it doesn’t look like Armageddon on a bad day anymore. As big a cheerleader for death as Josh Bolton thinks it could still fragment into civil war and partition, but that’s a small price to pay for…why did we go into Iraq again?
That’s all blood under the bridge. The news is what passes for good in the Middle East. So Bush was right, right? Ignore our standing in the world, the dead American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis killed, and the multiple reversals of American principles of international relations, just look at the news right now. It’s kinda sorta not horrible, right? History absolves Bush!
Okay, no it doesn’t. But at least we can take comfort in the fact that we eventually, after years of hell, have gotten a little lucky. A strategy was found that staunched a lot of the bleeding. Paying our enemies to not kill us is a little costly, but less expensive than dying. So what if we’re laying the groundwork for a civil war in Iraq down the road? By the time that happens Iraq will be another one of those countries we’ve forgotten all about. Quick: what’s happening in Nicaragua right now?
So enjoy the not horrible-ness of the news. I know. Any acknowledgement of non-horrendousness will give the hard-core neo-Cons solace as they lick their wounds in exile. Let them lick. Here’s a metaphor to counter any argument that Iraq not drawing us totally into apocalypse somehow justifies the madness of the Iraq war:
Say I stab you. Then, as you lie there bleeding, I operate on you. I’m not really a doctor, but I manage to stitch you up so you don’t die. Does that make me a healer? No. It makes me a crazy man.
We’ve got some more stitching to do. The world isn’t going to give us a license to practice medicine again anytime soon.
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