The US in Iraq is like a drunk driver behind the wheel of a car. The impaired driver may think that he/she is in control of the vehicle, and might even be in denial of alcohol impairment, but to everyone else the car out of control and a threat to everyone else.
Published on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 by the Guardian / UK
Why Stop the Great Satan? He's Driving Himself to Hell
Tehran can sit back and watch its tormentors sweat. But the US and Britain must start from diplomatic ground zero
by Simon Jenkins For axis of evil, read axis of hope. The frantic scrabbling for an exit strategy from Iraq now consuming Washington and London has passed all bounds of irony. Help from Syria and Iran? Surely these were the monsters that George Bush and Tony Blair were going to crush, back in 2003? Surely the purpose of the Iraq adventure was to topple these terrorism-sponsoring, women-suppressing, militia-funding fundamentalists in favour of stability, prosperity and western democracy? Can the exit from Iraq really be through Tehran and Damascus? Was that in the plan?
I remember asking a western intelligence officer in Baghdad, six months after the American invasion, what he would advise the Iranians to do. "Wait," he said with a smile. Iran has done just that. If I were Tehran I would still wait. I would sit back, fold my arms and watch my tormentors sweat. I would watch the panic in Washington and London as body bags pile up, generals mutter mutiny, alliances fall apart and electors cut and run.
As Blair's emissary, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, comes to me cap in hand, I would pour him tea and roar with laughter. I would ask him to repeat to my face the insults and bile his American taskmasters hurl at me daily. I would say with Shylock: "Hath a dog money? Is it possible a cur can lend three thousand ducats? Fair Sir, you spat on me Wednesday last; you spurned me such a day; you called me dog; and for these courtesies I'll lend you thus much moneys?"
As we approach the beginning of the end in Iraq there will be much throat-clearing and breast-beating before reality replaces denial. For the moment, denial still rules. In America last week I was shocked at how unaware even anti-war Americans are (like many Britons) of the depth of the predicament in Iraq. They compare it with Vietnam or the Balkans - but it is not the same. It is total anarchy. All sentences beginning, "What we should now do in Iraq ... " are devoid of meaning. We are in no position to do anything. We have no potency; that is the definition of anarchy.
From all available reports, Iraq south of the Kurdistan border is beyond central authority, a patchwork of ganglands, sheikhdoms and lawlessness. Anbar province and most of the Sunni triangle is controlled by independent Sunni militias. The only safe movement for outsiders is by helicopter at night. Baghdad is like Beirut in 1983, with nightly massacres, roadblocks everywhere and mixed neighbourhoods emptying into safe ones. As yesterday's awful kidnapping shows, even a uniform is a death certificate. As for the cities of the south, control depends on which Shia militia has been able to seize the local police station.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1115-22.htm
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