Rinse, Dry, Repeat

Cleansing:

After almost four years of trying to build Iraq's central government in Baghdad, the U.S. has found that what appears to work best in the divided country is just the opposite. So senior military officials are increasingly working to strengthen local players who are bringing some measure of stability to their communities. The new approach bears some striking similarities to the "soft partition" strategy pushed by senior Democrats, and suggests that despite the often bitter debate in Washington on Iraq policy, a broad consensus on how to move ahead in the war-torn country may be forming.

Because there are not enough violent, quarrelling factions in Iraq. All this will serve to do is 1. increase the likelihood of future ethnic cleansing, and 2. further destabilize the region by arming many different factions, thereby effectively punting the inevitable consolidation of control. And how do we know this is going to work?

The sheiks "told me that the kind of bottom-up progress that your efforts are bringing to Anbar is vital to the success and stability of a free Iraq," Mr. Bush told a crowd of about 750 soldiers and Marines. Mr. Bush yesterday suggested that if the local gains the U.S. is making continue to hold it could begin to reduce U.S. troop levels by the end of the year.

Because the sheiks - beneficiaries of such policies - told Bush it would and he believes them. Just like Bush believed we would be greeted in Baghdad with rose petals. Just like Bush believed that Petraeus would succeed because Bush told him that he must. By now we should all have a pretty good sense of how well-aligned Bush's beliefs are with reality.

As for that last line? Forget about it, more punting. The only thing Bush is interesting in doing is handing this mess off to the next Democratic president, to whom he can shift the blame.

On a somewhat related note, I was reading about the First Anglo-Afghan War (good book). There are many apt comparisons to be made between Vietnam and Iraq, and even more so for the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, but the British occupation of Afghanistan seems the most fitting. I cannot get into the details in this post, but learning about it has made me - if possible - more pessimistic about our involvement in Iraq. The best we can do now is leave in the most orderly fashion as soon as possible.