Informed Speculation

Fareed Zakaria says the best we can hope for in Iraq is a Korea-like stalemate:

BY 1952, the last year of his presidency, Harry Truman recognized that the victory he had hoped for was no longer possible in Korea. U.S. forces were not losing, but they were not winning, either. Instead they were caught up in a vast, bloody and expensive holding operation. Two thirds of the American public disapproved of the war. Truman had hoped that peace talks, underway since July 1951, would yield results, but his team was negotiating under constraints. Republicans were eager to criticize the Democrats for being soft on the communists. Others, even Democrats, asked how they could justify the deaths of 50,000 U.S. troops without a clear win. Many, including South Korea’s President Syngman Rhee, had not given up on the dream of a unified Korea that would be an ally in the war against communism.

George Will doesn’t seem to even hold out that much hope:

The latest plan to pacify Baghdad—announced in June, declared a failure in October—was called Operation Together Forward. But U.S.-Iraqi togetherness is a sometime thing. Last April, The Washington Post’s Jonathan Finer reported from Hawijah, Iraq, on a joint patrol to search for roadside bombs. The Iraqis refused to ride in armored U.S. Humvees, preferring pickup trucks because a cleric told them that anyone killed in an “occupier vehicle” would not go to heaven. Eventually, after threatening them with jail, U.S. Army Lt. Aaron Tapalman browbeat them into Humvees:

“About an hour later, the patrol came across a white bag on the roadside that Tapalman suspected might contain a bomb. When he asked some Iraqi soldiers to move it off the road, their commander balked, saying it wasn’t his job. ‘It is your job to protect the people,’ Tapalman said, increasingly exasperated. ‘I can go and move it myself, and you know what? I will, but don’t you think your people should see you doing that kind of stuff? Someday we’re not going to be here anymore.’ The Iraqi soldier declined again, apologetically, and drove away.”

A mordant joke told during the Cold War concerned asking an Italian, a Frenchman, an Englishman and a Russian to each describe his most cherished dream. The Italian said, “I want my country to produce the greatest artists.” The Frenchman said, “I want my nation to produce the greatest philosophers.” The Englishman said, “I want my country to produce the greatest parliamentarians.” The Russian said, “I want my neighbor’s cow to die.”

The joke was no laughing matter because it turned on this truth: A history of brutalizing tyranny had stunted the Russians’ aptitude for collective aspirations. Which brings us back to Iraq, which Patrick J. McDonnell of the Los Angeles Times covered for two years following the 2003 invasion. He recently returned. His Oct. 23 report ( “Into the Abyss of Baghdad”) begins:

“I keep seeing his face. He appears to be in his mid-20s, bespectacled, slightly bearded, and somehow his smile conveys a sense of prosperity to come. Perhaps he is set to marry, or enroll in graduate school, or launch a business—all these flights of ambition seem possible. In the next few images he is encased in plastic: His face is frozen in a ghoulish grimace. Blackened lesions blemish his neck. ‘Drill holes,’ says Col. Khaled Rasheed, an Iraqi commander who is showing me the set of photographs.”

Electric drills are the death squads’ preferred instruments of torture. McDonnell:

“One evening I accompanied a three-Humvee convoy of MPs through largely Shiite east Baghdad … The objective that evening was to patrol with Iraqi police, but the Iraqi lawmen are hesitant to be seen with Americans, whom they regard as IED [improvised explosive device] magnets. The joint patrol never worked out … The next night, an armor-piercing bomb hit the same squad, Gator 1-2. A sergeant with whom I had ridden the previous evening lost a leg; the gunner and driver suffered severe shrapnel wounds.”

For what?

Wow, I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to stick my head in the oven.  Thankfully, here’s James Lileks with a preview of the first hundred days under Speaker Pelosi:

We’re told the Democrats have an agenda – in the first 100 days, Congress will overturn the accumulated horrors of the Bush regime. (Except for Reagan’s funeral. They’ll let that stand.) A preview follows.

Day 1: Party like it’s 1992; citizenship for all Gitmo detainees; a blanket amnesty; and a “Circle of Healing” ceremony held on the Capitol steps.

Day 2: The troops in Iraq will leave, walking in reverse, as if someone is playing the tape backwards; special construction brigades will quickly repair all the buildings destroyed since the 2003 invasion; and the last American out will reinstall Saddam. Thereafter, whenever someone criticizes America for invading Iraq, we’ll look quizzical and say we don’t know what they’re talking about.

Day 3: Bush tax cuts repealed, so the upper 10 percent in income pay 67 percent of all federal taxes instead of 66 percent. That will make all the difference.

Day 4: Peace Corps sent en masse to Middle East to apologize personally to everyone and hand out gas-soaked flags and matchbooks. Burn one on us! Don’t you love us now?

Day 5: Peace Corps Hostage Negotiation Unit commissioned.

Day 6: Gay marriage legalized by congressional voice vote, so no one has to go on record. (This allows gay Democratic congressmen to vote no without being outed.)

Days 7-100: Impeachment hearings. Sure, Pelosi has said she’s against them. But as she promised: The children will be in charge. They’re cranky if they don’t get their way.

There, that’s better…