The Dish

Whatever David Petraeus says next month – and we know it’s going to be a glowing report of massive success – the reality of Iraq endures. That reality is that there is no Iraq. The "government" is paralyzed between sectarian factions none of which wants a national, political settlement any time soon. Money quote from a helpful Christian Science Monitor piece:

"We are frankly in the midst of the worst crisis," says Fakhri Karim, a close adviser to Messrs. Barzani and Talabani who also publishes the independent Al Mada newspaper. He says he doubts the Friday meeting will find any resolution because of the new political tussle with the Iraqi Accordance Front.

"Most of the political blocs have failed to operate within the framework of national consensus. They can’t even properly formulate their positions and proposals, let alone realize the very serious dangers that surround everyone."

The gravity of the situation was underscored by several officials. "We have a governmental crisis. Our people expect better performance," said Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

And since Saturday, US Ambassador Ryan Crocker has been shuttling between Iraq’s top leaders, but an embassy spokesperson said this was not necessarily indicative of a crisis.

"The surge has done well in making a difference in security conditions. But it isn’t a light switch for reconciliation; there are no quick fixes to years of bitterness and violence," he said.

A sign of that lack of a quick fix is the fact that in the South, the Brits are preparing to hand over power to the Shiite militias. They do not compose an entity with any real connection to "Iraq." And the main general tasked with training Iraqis for security cannot find any leaders who aren’t already coopted by the sect they belong to.

"You can’t grow a force this fast and have the right number of qualified leaders," Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik told The Associated Press on Saturday. “You can’t do it. This is a problem now, and it will be a problem for a good number of years."

General Dubik said nonsectarianism was "much harder" to instill than teaching soldiers how to fight.

We’re either stuck there for a decade of grueling police work in a slow-motion civil war, or we can get out. We should obviously get out – as shrewdly and as carefully as we can.

Beats me.

A reader responds to this anti-American diatribe:

I didn’t "get" soccer until my son started playing at age 7, continuing to age 15. Now I "get" it, but I understand why a lot of Americans don’t. Even though more American kids now play soccer than baseball or "gridiron" football (true — you could look it up), it’s just a lot more fun to play than to watch. On behalf of the average American, I enter the following pleas to Duleep Allirajah’s charges.

"Exhibit A, m’lud, is that the Yanks don’t like draws. They want to see a winner. They want shoot-outs to settle games."

Half guilty and half innocent of this compound charge. Us Yanks abhor draws AND shoot-outs, which are essentially coin-tosses that demean the preceding hour-plus of struggle. If a game can’t determine a winner without resorting to crap like a shoot-out, then "Why play the damn game?" starts to look like a legitimate question.

"Exhibit B is that Americans don’t like low-scoring games. The only thing that Americans hate more than 0-0 draws is Osama bin Laden. So short is the average American’s concentration span that, unless there’s a goal every two minutes, they’re trotting off to the catering stall to buy another chilli dog."

Guilty, and with no apology. Look, everyday life contains quite enough unrewarded patience and unresolved ambiguity, thanks very much. We’d like something different in our sports.

"Exhibit C is the fact that they insist on calling it ‘soccer’."

Again, guilty with no apology. The American masses used the term "football" for our gridiron sport for several decades before being exposed to soccer-football. We’re not about to call sausage and mashed potatoes "bangers and mash," either. This is OK, and not meant as an insult. Hey, you can call a car’s hood a "bonnet" and call a truck a "lorry" without us claiming you don’t "get" motorized vehicles. (Though Lucas electronics make that case pretty eloquently.)

Oh, and Allirajah has forgotten something else: Baseball and gridiron football have regular breaks in the action, allowing a fan to get a beer and chili dog, or visit the restroom (you know, a "loo") without missing much. Soccer has many fewer breaks. And sports without beer and chili dogs is like bangers without mash, or fish without chips (and we’ll call them "chips" before "freedom fries" sees the light of day again).

My nemesis emerges.

"What we’ve got here is failure to communicate." "Cool Hand Luke.

Canadecastilla, Nicaragua, sunrise.

"Cindy Sheehan, when all is said and done, is a sympathetic and pathetic figure," – Rush Limbaugh.

"Use enough dynamite there Butch?" "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

A reader writes:

Is it true, as you wrote, that "people much further away from the levers of power saw more clearly than we did"?  Or is it possible their judgement, given the facts known at the time, was unsound and only redeemed by events and administration decisions they could not foresee, ie., too few troops, dissolution of the army, rejection of the Baathists, thousands of suicide bombers lined up for miles ready to blow Iraqi society into chaos, etc?  Their judgement that invading Iraq was a mistake turned out to be correct, but only in hindsight, not foresight.  Which begs the question – was the chaos in Iraq inevitable?  We will never know the answer, but not knowing the answer does not mean the pre-war naysayers "saw more clearly than we did."

Ouch.