Until All Are Gone

For more than a year now we had to watch a once great country bang its collective head against an immovable object. Thousands had to die and billions were wasted on a misconceived project of improving the world by force - as if such a thing had ever worked before.

Even before the war, all of us who were marching against a war in Iraq had the feeling that nothing good could come out of yet another war to improve the world.

But once the fighting started, at least for a week or so, I trusted the planners in the White House and Pentagon to at least have a plan, any plan really, on how to make this work. I mean, at least they've been thinking this through for more than ten years, and if they wanted to extract the oil from Iraq, they had to stabilize the country first...

Not these people. Intelligent planning was not on their agenda. A bunch of murderous idiots had taken over the country and they would not stop, would not relent until they had destroyed the United States that we know and loved.

Even a few weeks into the war, when the looting started, it became clear that there are not enough troops in the country, and the ones there are excellently trained and equipped for only one thing - invading a country and toppling the current government.

And for one long year now we had to witness the slow-motion downfall of a giant:

- The US military is hopelessly overstretched and thanks to the mistreatment of the soldiers by their own government, recruitment will be a challenge for some time to come.

- Friends and allies have been ignored, ridiculed and alienated to the point where most of Europe will politically not be able to do anything for the US in the Middle East.

- The dollar is weak and the Asian economies are running out of steam in their effort to prop it up against their own currencies.

And that's just for starters.

And then this week we all got to see how deep this pool of shit really is that we are wading in. American soldiers, secret agents and private mercenaries are using one of Sadam's very own prison camps to terrorize and kill Iraqis.

American foreign policy will not recover from this desaster for decades, and any hope for a postitive American involvement in the Middle East have just been flushed down the toilet by a bunch of moronic soldiers taking happy vacation pictures of themselves torturing Iraqi prisoners.

The only thing left to do is pack up and go home. The US soldiers don't want to be there. The Iraqis don't want them to be there. There is no chance for peace in Iraq until all are gone.