The Day Iraq Stood Still.

We’ll be leaving now.

We are truly sorry we fucked up your country.

Hussein and his demon seed are gone, and that’s a fine thing, but from the beginning this was a bad marriage born out of lies, haste and beer judgment. And now that it has escalated from screaming and crying to knives and children endangerment, we have to face this sad fact: There are certain disasters in life you not only cannot fix, but are so out-of-control your mere presence can only make matters worse regardless of how honorable your intentions may be.

I’m not a foreign policy expert. I don’t speak Arabic. I have never been to Iraq. Having said all that, like you, I read and I listen carefully and widely and I defer to experts who have concluded that there are no more good options left – military or otherwise.

Years ago, thoughtful professionals warned that the day would come when Bush Policies in Iraq would render the situation unfixable.

The day would come when anything and everything we could do would be too little, too late.

Those people were called America-hating traitors, and were told to shut the fuck up.

Lots of other people (one of the most infamous being Tom Friedman, after whom the eternally revolving, self-deluded “wait just a longer” six-month increment was named) did not want to believe this. They insisted if we just stuck it out a little longer we would turn a Magic Democracy Corner and things would get better.

And when things did not get better -- when the Magic Democracy Mirage kept receding over the horizon and things first got bad, and then got hellishly, Boschian bad -- they counseled craven denial.

They demanded all those inconvenient metrics and yardsticks and broken promises that kept showing how lethally wrong they were be thrown in the trash.

They counseled staying the course for just one more friedman.

Then another.

Then another.

In a thread down below, terry of the C.A. asks the question -- The Question -- correctly:

Ah, yes, Iraq.

What the fuck are we going to do in Iraq?

I know that most everybody wants the troops home soon, but is there any way that we can in some small measure minimize the horrible damage that we have inflicted there before we come home?

I hope to God the Baker study group has some good ideas.

And I don't expect the troops to be home is six months, either. What does anyone else thing? I think....two years? We do have an obligation to try to make things better, or would it be best that we just butt out and go home? Will we see Iraq divided into three countries?

Any foreign policy wonks/history majors out there with anything intelligent (as opposed to my rambling) to bless us with? (And please note that I came here for some intelligent insight, my friends.)

Goddamn, what a horrible situation.

I am not an expert on the internal political and religious forces at work in the corridors of Iraqi power, but the immutable properties of time, pressure and human nature suggest that the least horrifying of the atrocious choices the Bush Administration has left on the table will sound -- no kidding -- a whole lot like Klaatu’s monologue from the last scene of “The Day The Earth Stood Still”.

In short order we will bring in Iraq’s regional neighbors to talk things through and negotiate a truce, an amnesty and a timetable.

We will promise continued support in whatever non-inflammatory way we can.

We will close our bases, turn the keys over to whatever the Iraqi government looks like that day, and withdraw redeploy to the edges of the sandbox for logistical and air support, and remain on-call for who-knows-how-long for certain kinds of specific, tactical and narrowly-defined missions just like American forces do in dozens of other places.

Then we’ll make a little speech that will sound a lot like this:

KLAATU

I am leaving soon and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly.

The Universe grows smaller every day -- and the threat of aggression by any group -- anywhere -- can no longer be tolerated.

There must be security for all -- or no one is secure... This does not mean giving up any freedom except the freedom to act irresponsibly.

Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves -- and hired policemen to enforce them.

We of the other planets have long accepted this principle.

We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets -- and for the complete elimination of aggression. A sort of United Nations on the Planetary level... The test of any such higher authority, of course, is the police force that supports it.
…

We do not pretend to have achieved perfection -- but we do have a system -- and it works.

I came here to give you the facts.

It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet -- but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder.

Your choice is simple. Join us and live in peace. Or pursue your present course -- and face obliteration.

We will be waiting for your answer.

The decision rests with you.

And then we will leave.

We will leave because "Do No Harm" must be the first commandment in all things.

And leaving is the least harmful of all the terrible choices the Bush Administration has left us.