LET GEORGE DO IT!

A couple of weeks ago, as my girlfriend Magpie and I were watching the ever-deteriorating situation in Iraq unfold on the evening news, I brought up one of my recurring themes, that the infernal descent of American involvement in that country would only be brought to a conclusion by the establishment of an international conference involving all the interested parties.

In their desperation to find a structured solution to an ill-misbegotten quagmire of delusion and blunders, the administration is even seeking to involve Iran, which will be a strategic disaster in the long term given the Iranians’ longstanding hostility toward us and the west. The Iranians, on the other hand, figure that if they sit tight and do nothing they will end up plucking the world’s second or third largest world oil preserves like a piece of rotten fruit off a tree.

I told Magpie, “Nobody listens to me. But I guarantee you, Kissinger is going to propose an international conference on Iraq, and then the idea will start to gain traction.”

Magpie’s response was, “Why don’t you shut up and let me watch TV?”

OK, I’m an idiot. People only listen to what I’ve got to say to the extent that they can tell me to stick to what I know, which is essentially nothing, and leave the deep thinking to the established experts, like Kissinger.

Never mind that Kissinger’s deep thinking has never brought anything but misery and suffering to the people of the world. If you examine the history of Kissinger’s involvment in Latin America and Asia, the result has been right-wing dictatorships that have all eventually collapsed.

Nevertheless, given the instantaneous historical amnesia that affects the intellectual class of society, this tomato can, Kissinger, still has credibility. And he, at least, remembers that The Congress of Vienna and The International Conference at Versailles were responsible for restoring a tenuous sort of temporary stability after two European conflagrations.

Kissinger remembers that, although nobody else seems to. Except 200motels.

So I was not in the least surprised that less than a week later Kissinger issued a statement to the effect that the Iraq war was unwinnable and that the only solution for a structured American withdrawal was an international conference.

I read this on the bus on my way to work, and when I arrived, I immediately called Magpie.

“See, it’s developing exactly the way I told you.”

Magpie’s response: “I seem to remember something about an international conference, but I don’t remember you mentioning Kissinger. Why don’t you just go to work and bring home some money?”

Well, that’s why we have women, to remind us we don’t know shit.

Quite aside from that, I’d like to take a couple of minutes to fill in spaces that Kissinger, in his brevity, didn’t bother to explain.

The first is that Iraq’s neighbors; Iran, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are not the only interested parties that would be attending a world conference on Iraq. Every oil-consuming country has an interest. That includes Japan, China, Europe, Russia and practically any other country able to afford the cost of sending a delegation.

The second issue is, what countries have the military capacity to install troops in Iraq to allow the Americans to withdraw? This narrows the field down considerably. The Europeans are already tied up in Lebanon and Afghanistan. They don’t have enough divisions to occupy Iraq.

That leaves Russia and China, who have large standing armies. But they are not going to be willing to shoulder the financial burden of deploying to Iraq, which means that we would be forced to shoulder the cost of replacing our withdrawing forces with those of counties who have their own strategic designs on the region. Essentially, we would have to pay for two wars, our failed effort and that of our designated babysitters, who we would be paying to steal oil that we wanted to steal.

This solution will never fly in our own country politically, which brings us back to square one. Don’t count on the Democrats to come up with an original solution for an orderly withdrawal from Iraq. Even if they had an idea, they would keep it to themselves. The Democrats are going to be perfectly happy to leave the prosecution of the Iraq war squarely in the lap of Mr. Top Gun, there, and let him die the death of a thousand cuts. By the time the 2008 elections roll around, the American people will be so revolted with video clips of exploding Iraqis and lame, feeble excuses by administration apologists, that they will be happy to install a Democratic administration and solid Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.

Maybe then we’ll get the social services we deserve in this country to bring us the kind of standard of living and social stability the Europeans enjoy, instead of the precarious catch-as-catch-can existence so many of us are forced to endure on a daily basis today.

We should give thanks for Bush: he is a congenital moron, the product of many generations of marrying cousins. His idiocy brought the current political and social system to an impending meltdown.

The only worry is that this Nancy Pelosi, with her 90210-style petty grudges and personal grievances will install another set of thieves and chiselers like Murtha and Hastings, giving the Republicans who, assembled like so many ghouls and zombies, arms stretching through the gates like “Dawn of the Dead,” are hoping to get their hooks into the American people for one more round of flesh-eating mayhem.

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Posted on 11/26/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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