What we've wrought

Now even the actual "best case scenario" for Iraq is worse than leaving Saddam alone and contained:

Iraqi film director Basim Kahar says the homeland he remembers in two films set for release this month is no longer recognisable to his generation of secular artists.

"Khatoun (the Ladies)" tells the stories of 62 Iraqi actresses who left Iraq in phases, most of them after the U.S. invasion four years ago. "Ambassador in a Cafe" is about Abu Haloub, a leftist Iraqi exile who has for years been going to Rawda cafe in Damascus, and sits at the same table every day.

Kahar says this breed of artists and intellectuals, once highly respected, is becoming extinct in an Arab World which is turning more Islamic.

"Baghdad has become wrapped in a turban and wearing a beard," Kahar told Reuters. "Abu Haloub and the 62 actresses who represented Iraqi femininity and joy in theatre, cinema and television do not belong to the 'new Iraq'."

The U.S. invasion, he said, had ushered in a dominant political class allied to clerics who are wiping out a tradition of art and secular thought that survived even the stifling ideology of the now-deposed Baath Party under Saddam Hussein.

"Abu Haloub represents Baghdad's dying character -- a culture of dress, song, painting, cafes, theatre, museums, behaviour, dealing with others and even food," Kahar said.

"The Baghdadi character survived lack of freedom for decades but is now extinct. It has been driven out of its home and its city. Religion has taken over politics, culture, morality and law. We have gone back centuries."

The fact that the reality we have brought into being in Iraq is EXACTLY what we were supposedly fighting against ("Islamic Extremism" or "Islamofascism" what have you) is the greatest condemnation possible.

We have managed to set the ground for the death of an enlightenment that years of dictatorial suppression could not kill, is in fact, exactly the opposite of what was promised by those who most strongly supported the war -- and naturally who continue to support it. The same people, rather than being shamed into whatever ooze they crawled out of, continue to be feted with fat-salaries, published and promoted on all manner of chat shows, for they are royalty in the 'Pundirati'. In fact, their long history of wrongful predictions are never even mentioned when they should have their nose rubbed in it like a puppy that's crapped on your pillow.

For some unfathomable reason, perhaps my cloying humanity, it truly pisses me off.