Calling Buck Turgidson

Rich on Roskam-Duckworth:

Where else but in D.C. could well-educated, intelligent people argue ferociously for a solid year about whether or not to call the horrific bloodbath in Iraq a “civil war,” while never once bothering to come together on any actual solutions to the problem?

In what other civilized democracy would otherwise reasonable human beings constantly question whether their political opponents are on the side of terrorists? And instead of unifying behind solutions to the real terrorist threat and its underlying causes, they ban little old ladies from bringing bottled water onto airplanes?

And on what bizarre planet does an official National Intelligence Estimate, which reports that the Iraq war is a major reason for the spread of jihadist movements, become yet another indecent political football, with both sides parsing every word to prove that they’re right and everyone who disagrees with them is somehow evil?

What in the hell is wrong with that place?

The one aspect Rich doesn’t cover (and he did a good job) is that if one admits the obvious, that a civil war is in fact occurring, the solution is far different than fighting the remnants of the Baathists and some militant Islamists.

In the case of terrorism and guerrila war, politics is a part of the solution, but ultimately military defeat is answer to the fighters already fighting.

In the case of a civil war the only solution when it’s sectarian violence barring genocide is a political solution with current combatants.

For those who wish to try and continue to paint this as a war against militant Islamists in Iraq, head examines are in order. It’s not. It is a full out Civil War between Sunnis and Shiites and we aren’t even able to interfere with the Death Squads as the recent blocking of our efforts to go after Sadr’s forces clearly demonstrated. If you cannot target the death squads how do you stop the killing? Pretending we are doing anything besides sending young Americans into a meat grinder at this point is nothing more than a delusion.

The use of Jihadist threat by politicians is also another great example of how idiots creating policy only makes matter wsorse. Jihad as an actual war isn’t how most Muslims view the concept, instead it is a war with oneself to be devout. Not all that different from the concept Protestants have in saying we are all depraved sinners.

Using Jihadist as the way of describing the threat from militant Islamists leads to more misunderstanding regarding who we are fighting–not by us, but by the very Muslims who we hope to work with to create functioning liberal democracies. Americans don’t understand the power of words and that is why we are in a war run by the stupids.

But the stupids are even outdoing themselves. Instead of picking the situation where there is a need for a political solution, Frist picked Afghanistan and said we need to find a political solution with the Taliban.

He may have outstupided Hastert this week, though the understated coverage might not make it to be as much of a public spectacle. Mel Martinez joined in the fun.

The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military means.

“You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government,” Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. “And if that’s accomplished we’ll be successful.”

Frist said asking the Taliban to join the government was a decision to be made by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida accompanying Frist, said negotiating with the Taliban was not “out of the question” but that fighters who refused to join the political process would have to be defeated.

“A political solution is how it’s all going to be solved,” he said.

There will have to be a political solution in Afghanistan since different areas are effectively controlled by different warlords, but the Taliban is the one group that’s cannot be a part of that solution. They provided a base for a direct attack on the United States and would do so again if they were to regain power.

Somehow, those who have left their faculties back when they flushed, seem to think it’s a legitimate argument to look at a miserable failure and ask for more miserable failure to ensure they look tough. Somehow, miserable failure to such folks has become not enough failure and we must continue to fail at all costs. There may be no sign that their miserable failure will improve by pursuing the same strategy that created the miserable failure, but by God we’ll pursue miserable failure with the righteousness of a crusader.

Rich points out the problem of alternative solutions such as timelines and he’s right. The problem is that for those enthralled with the notion of truly stupendous failure, mitigating that failure is not an option.

There are no good solutions in Iraq anymore is the reality of the situation and there haven’t been since the Heritage Institution and Halliburton staffed the ‘reconstruction’. There are less bad solutions, however. The first step is for Americans to get over their bruised egos and decided that young American lives are more important than feeling tough and sit down at the table to negotiate with all the major sects in Iraq regardless of whether they have killed Americans.

It’s hard to imagine how a partition isn’t the only workable solution at this point. Once torture and mass killings become the method of solving your differences, a giant timeout where everyone goes to their own corner for decades or centuries is about the only way to avoid a genocide or genocides.

But don’t think about that, we have to fail like we have never failed before and there is no time to waste in truly miserable failures.