Don't Get Killed in the Semi-Finals

I was told this a lot in 1968, by conservatives I considered knowledgeable friends.

It summed up their attitude toward Vietnam at the time, and their feeling the Vietcong would be reluctant to risk death. (They were wrong, of course.) The real fight wasn't with us, but between them, they assumed. So don't get killed in the semi-finals.

The good news from Iraq is we seem to be past the semi-finals. The current Battle of Basra is really the Bush Administration's last stand.

If Nouri al-Maliki should win, we will have chosen Iraq's new Saddam. He'll be a Shiite Saddam, he'll be a Saddam allied with Iran, but we'll have put him there. The point is this may be "victory" enough for our troops to get the heckoutofthere.

Unfortunately, right now he doesn't look like a winner. He's already had to call on Uncle Sam to hold Baghdad and we're hearing the same-old same-old about bad planning further south.

Not that it makes any difference to the Iraqis at this point.

Iraq, if it remains a unitary state at all, will be an Iranian ally, and dependent. Under al-Maliki the Kurdish rebels in the northern part of the country will have a nominal autonomy. The Sunnis in the center and west will have a U.S. guarantee of security and a Saudi guarantee of a modest living standard.

If Moqtada al Sadr wins this fight we might stay or we might go, but we cannot win. al Sadr will have beaten an army we created and trained. He will have shown that the will of the people is with him -- an insurgent militia can't beat a government army without substantial public support. We're out of money, and can't rebuild al-Maliki to have another go.

A President McCain might stage a Diem-like coup against al-Maliki and find another puppet. A President Obama or President Clinton will just declare victory and go home.

There will be no justice for Iraq. There will be no human rights for women. There will be no economy until there is peace, and whatever economy emerges will be oil-based, controlled by whichever faction wins.

This is what we spent $1-3 trillion, 4,000 dead, and 75,000 grievously wounded for. We have a chance to declare a pyrrhic victory in the next week, but the accent will be on the word pyrrhic.

The lesson should be clear. No one can occupy a nation indefinitely against its will, except in doing so it break itself. China might do well to note this.

But they're as stupid as we are.