Slip Kid

I remember, or maybe it was just a dream, a time when conservatives, while poo-pooing the idea it would ever happen would admit that a combination of finding no WMD and unleashing Civil War would mean that the idea of invading Iraq was a failure and it should mean the end of the Bush Insurgency at home.

Of course, hypotheticals are for pussies I guess. Team loyalty above all.

Today, Tom Friedman says, "I for one welcome the Civil War".

What the Bush team has done in Iraq, by ousting Saddam, was not to "liberate" the country - an image and language imported from the West and inappropriate for Iraq - but rather to unleash the latent civil war in that country. Think of shaking a bottle of Champagne and then uncorking it.

This is not to say that the "liberation" of Iraq's people is impossible. But unlike in Eastern Europe - where a democratic majority was already present and crying to get out, and all we needed to do was remove the wall - in Iraq we first need to create that democratic majority.

That is what these elections are about and why they are so crucial. We don't want the kind of civil war that we have in Iraq now. That is a war of Sunni and Islamist militants against the U.S. and its Iraqi allies, many of whom do not seem comfortable fighting with, and seemingly for, the U.S. America cannot win that war. That is a civil war in which the murderous insurgents appear to be on the side of ending the U.S. "occupation of Iraq" and the U.S. and its allies appear to be about sustaining that occupation.

The civil war we want is a democratically elected Iraqi government against the Baathist and Islamist militants.

Ah, being right, never paid off so little. Take it away Mr. Daltrey...

Keep away old man, you won't fool me
You and your history won't rule me
You might have been a fighter,
but admit you failed
I'm not affected by your blackmail
You won't blackmail me