Go Read …

… James Wolcott’s latest blog post, titled Headless Body In Topless War.

As far as I can figure out, the citizens still in Iraq only have three things they can do on a daily basis, now:

1. Sit around watching American soldiers patrol their streets (most reports I have read that I trust suggest that the Iraqi troops are not trained and are either next to useless or actively subvert when they have a chance)

2. Fight the occupying forces, in one way or another, or

3. Cower somewhere, waiting to be captured, threatened, bombed or accidentally killed

I doubt many young adults are going to school, I can’t inmagine much commerce is going on there, and I doubt that the preparations for elections are proceeding as they should.

Here’s an excerpt from Wolcott’s piece, to which I pointed above:

So thick is the euphoria and triumphalism post November 2nd that I wonder if most of our media, never mind the bovine American public, have any inkling of how ghastily Iraq is going down the drain, and taking the American military with it. We’ve been so bombarded with “Failure is not an option” that few are willing to assert, as van Creveld and Lind do, that failure may not be an option but it damn well may be the outcome, and quicker than anyone contemplates.

Andrew Sullivan and Thomas Friedman can petition for more troops all they please. It’s too late for more troops. We don’t have troops to spare as it is, but even if we did, it’s too late. It’s too late for everything. The blundering mistakes that were made in the first days and weeks of the occupation can’t be reversed now–they’re incorrectible. The window of opportunity dropped like a guillotine while Donald Rumsfeld was regaling the press corps with his pithy wisdom.