No, I”m not talking about my writing career, though with that title, I could be. I’m talking about the growing irrelevance of the US presence in Iraq.
Some readers know the experience of being a non-entity, an irrelevance, at a party. You get an invitation because the host gets a “charity” attack and lets you know about it. But after trying a few times to engage acquaintances in conversations that last probably two exchanged phrases of no more than five words each, and no one initiates a chat with you, it becomes painfully “clear” that you’re really a ghost, an almost imperceptible fog, an irrelevance. You have to decide to either hang in there and hope to encounter (and engage) a fog less perceptible to the others than you, and thus fund a scintilla of satisfaction . . . . . . . . . or quietly exit the venue. It happens with organizations too. It happened to me with Poets & Writers Literary Forum of Springfield. (That’s another Honey & Whineine for another time.) It happens with swaggering oil addict deceivers who live in white houses who shouldn’t throw stones.
We know Iran is doing some “deciding” regarding their desired outcome of the civil war between Shiite and Sunni. To a lesser degree, their opposing forces are doing the same, and neither (Iran, religious fanaticals vs. Saudi more Westernized, less religiously intolerant) side particularly concerns itself with the ranting former baseball team owner from Texas thinks about it all. As the hue and cry regarding Nouri Maliki cranks up the stakes on both sides of the real zeal, percisely what General Petreus thinks (an excellent military man who regularly reminds the world there can be no military solution; only a political solution) matters less and less. The honorable general (whom I truly revere and respect) is a carpenter in a house that needs a plumber. Whatever recommendation he makes regarding his capacity, or his commander in chief’s capacity, to direct a solution will fall short in not facilitating the only solution he has stated can provide the ultimate fix!
As I have said before: “If we had some bacon, we could have some tasty bacon and eggs if we had some eggs.” Actually, my dad said that in about 19 sixty-something when we were clowning around. (He was a great man in many ways who deserved better than he received from his children.)
You can be certain that as the irrelevance of US military forces becomes so apparent that even the “#43″ sees his clothes are a ghost, the presence of Saudi, Iran and Syria will become more manifest in central and Southern Iraq, and our former allies the Turks will do to northern Iraq what another ranter with teeth did to Austria.
What will the US do when the presence of our pals the Saudis becomes so apparent we have to acknowedge and deal with them? You can bet #43 hopes they will hold back until November 2008. My bet is that the Saudis won’t wait that long. My bet is that they will become the white feather that you sit meditating in a corner and try not to think about by October 2007.
In the meantime, you can be sure the Washington wizards are conjuring up alibis ad nauseum to make irrelevant what they know Petreus will say, the way #43 sanctioned the Baker-Hamilton Report and then spat on it. It would be comical if so many brave men and women serving in the military and innocents living in that Bush-scourged nation were not dying for a growing irrelevance.
Live long . . . . . . and proper.
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