The End In Sight

Someone is finally telling the truth at the Washington Post.

The debate is over: By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war. Indeed, the only thing standing between Iraq and a descent into total Bosnia-like devastation is 135,000 U.S. troops -- and even they are merely slowing the fall. The internecine conflict could easily spiral into one that threatens not only Iraq but also its neighbors throughout the oil-rich Persian Gulf region with instability, turmoil and war.

You have to wonder if there is anything that the American military machine can do to turn the Iraq War around, to somehow set that country on a course to stability, or even to some other sort of hopeful dictatorship, one much like the regime we changed, one that would somehow keep the decay of Iraq in check, but one that would be acceptable to the West. Obviously, since we can't get the Iraqis to get on the Happy Bus and wave the flag of democracy, our next best hope is to somehow get them to stop killing each other. It's too late to spring Saddam from jail, the Shiites have been elected, and they seem to want to kill the Sunnis in great numbers, and unfortunately, we have armed them to the teeth so that they are more than able to fulfill these wants. You have to wonder if there's a possibility that there is a solution to this serious problem, and then you have to wonder that if there is such a solution, why we haven't tried to implement it.

You have to wonder if the situation in Iraq is the result of political and military incompetence on a scale so large that it is beyond explanation, or you can wonder if there is somehow a reason that we have entered into a conflict that we have made no effort to win.

You can wonder, and you can say to yourself, "What the F are we doing?" Even if you have no military experience in your own background, you might still wonder why we never sent additional troops to Iraq to secure the country once everything began to go sideways. Is it really because we don't have enough troops? Is it because Rumsfeld can't admit that he was wrong about the new American Military Lite, Tastes Great, Fewer Casualties? Is the world's only Superpower really losing a war because some guy who is older than our Grandfather can't admit that he miscalculated?

You can wonder what the Democrats might do when they take office in January. Will they send more American soldiers to die in the dessert in an effort to turn the situation around? Will it be too little too late?

You can wonder what losing Iraq will cost the world. If you read the Washington Post, you can wonder if this statement is a warning of the future consequences of this rash action that our country has undertaken.

However, the greatest threat that the United States would face from civil war in Iraq is from the spillover -- the burdens, the instability, the copycat secession attempts and even the follow-on wars that could emerge in neighboring countries. Welcome to the new "new Middle East" -- a region where civil wars could follow one after another, like so many Cold War dominoes.

And you have to wonder what chaos in the world's gas station will truly mean for us, with the owners of the gas having the means to choke off the blood supply to the world economy. And then you wonder what the end will look like, whether our soldiers will make it out alive, and whether a strong military will ever be able to protect us from what is coming.

The end of the war is in sight, but what that means for our country's security has never been more uncertain.

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