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there is no obvious way out of iraq.
an immediate withdrawal seems appealing mostly because it is an obvious something...you can say it, and because you can say it, you can confuse it with a plan.
the situation in iraq, so far as one can make it out through the fog of "public diplomacy" is several steps beyond precarious. it is self-evidently civil war, and civil war had to be at the abosute bottom of anyone's lilst of desired outcomes. and given the way in which the neo-cons had relied on rewinding the history of vietnam, it hardly seems likely that planning for chaos and/or defeat would have been high on their agenda.
so the americans float about in about the worst possible scenario.
it looks like the administration is working the "this business is too big to be allowed to fail" argument diplomatically--the too big to fail business is of course the united states---the regional negociations are about this---and within these negociations, the horsetrading. i would expect lots of words and little in the way of actual help. iran, for example, has been a recipient of a whole lot of republican botched foreign policy since the 1980s and i cannot see why they would not find watching the americans twist in the wind to be really gratifying:how many iranians were killed in the iran-iraq war? and who did the americans arm?
appealing to the un doesnt seem possible, particularly not with that fucktard john bolton as the public face of the united states in that context--as if the appalling treatment of the un meted out by the bush people at the start of this debacle was not already a problem in itself, yet another gift from the american far right that keeps on giving.
i dont see any good options.
the one that seems to follow most logically, given the paucity of alternatives generated by the idiot policies of this administration, is increase troop numbers under the logic of increased military action in order to stabilize the situation so the americans can then withdraw. but maybe that is a pipe dream: on the weekend, a marine memo leaked that outlines a scenario you can only describe a military defeat in anwar, in the west of iraq.
this is what we call a fiasco.
it is kind of surreal.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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