Iraq Spillith Over - Time to Geteth Out

Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack write about the Iraqi Civil War in the Sunday Outlook section of the August 20 Washington Post. They maintain that we cannot choose sides in this civil war. The only problem is that we already have. For all the history of the region's civil conflicts they left out the genesis of this one, the tribal conflict between Saddam's community and the remainder of the country which the United States helped stoke when it urged the Shia and Kurds to revolt in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Any analysis that does not start with the premise that we started it is incomplete. This also puts the conflict in perspective, as a tribal conflict may or may not spread as a true sectarian civil war would.

Acknowledging our part in the Iraqi civil war gives us a way out. In fact, it shows that getting out is the best option. We need not insist on the existence of an artificial Iraq, but should instead find a Sunni Arab nation or Turkey to occupy that portion where we really were not wanted, perhaps the Baathist Syria or the Hashemite Jordanians. Neither of the last two will be opposed as we are. They will be looked upon as liberators from American tyranny. For more on how and why we got into this, how the U.N. can't help, how to get out, and the problem of American hegemony, see http://www.geocities.com/mikeybdc/Iraq.html.

Our involvement in this region has as much to do with the preservation of the defense industrial complex. If we are ever to break free of this we need to redirect our defense industry to the peaceful exploration of space and transform our alliance to an allied government, which as I say in the Iraq essay, is necessary given the current American overreach and the resentment among our allies that George Bush is behaving as if he were king of the world, which our international treaties actually make him. It is time to overthrow this king, and to do this we need a majority of the House to oppose him and two-thirds of the Senate to have an open mind.