Max Boot: No Good Options in Iraq. So Just Stay and Bleed Forever.

[BurtWorm]

Brilliant strategist. What we need is some Boot on the ground over there.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_11/010181.php

IRAQ....Max Boot, who has been writing many strange columns of late, has outdone himself today. He starts out well:

First, let's get one thing straight. Contrary to the suggestions sometimes heard on conservative talk radio, the terrible headlines out of Iraq aren't an invention of liberal news media. They all too accurately reflect the grim reality.

That's some bracing tonic for the Kool-Aid drinkers in right blogistan, and props to Boot for serving it up. But then things gets weird.

In the rest of the column, Boot literally brings up and dismisses every possible solution for stabilizing Iraq. A political compromise? Nobody wants one and nobody could make it stick even if they did. Cutting a deal with Iran and Syria? They don't want to help and couldn't do much in any case. Partition? Just another word for civil war. A benign dictator? Nice idea, but no one can make this work without a functioning security service. More troops? We'd need another quarter million and we don't have them.

It sounds grim, but I hardly need to tell you how this ends, do I? Maybe we can't win, but that doesn't mean we should withdraw. That would be disastrous. So we should just stay forever with no prospect of success in sight. This is, apparently, called "being honest with ourselves."

[Lexingtonian]

1. You have to remember that preservation of American ego

about military power and self-imputed benign behavoir, aka messiah complex, is the unspoken top priority of all these "plans" or lack of plans.

Imagine what the policy could or would be if we cut American ego and this patronizing messianism out as a factor. Yeah, we'd walk away from Baghdad and let Maliki fall, let the warlords have their civil war to settle ancient scores. And we could redeem ourselves by protecting civilians of all sides and economic infrastructure in safe haven areas.

But that wouldn't feed American right wingnut ego, it would be too selfless, humble, and wise to be tolerable. After all, isn't Iraq really about the holy trinity of Me, Myself, and I?

[BurtWorm]

2. And a billion-of-dollars state-of-the-art intelligence gathering palace

where the US Embassy was supposed to be ensconced.