I wouldn't call grunts "Dikes" if I were you...

It's amazing. Tom Friedman manages to spin an entire column out of a premise he gets wrong in the first paragraph:

Dear Sirs: As someone who really wishes you well, I am writing to give you my best sense of how the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is going to affect the U.S. mission in Iraq. Let me begin with an analogy offered by Michael Mandelbaum, author of the forthcoming book "The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the 21st Century." He points out: "The U.S. military presence in Iraq today is like the dikes and levees that were protecting New Orleans from the flood. The equivalent of the flood for Iraq is a civil war between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. The U.S. military right now is holding that back."

There's more to the column, but it's not really worth reading.

Dear Tom:

THE US IS CAUSING THE CIVIL WAR, YOU MORON.

That is all.

In case you think I'm simply being glib, let's be clear - the US presence in Iraq is a) motivating Sunni extremists, and b) emboldening the Shia and Kurdish minorities to make large demands, out of the belief they'll be protected by the US. There's every reason to believe that as long as the US acts as an enabler to these parties, the civil tensions will get worse, not better.

There is going to be an Iraqi civil war, whether the Americans leave now or later. The only choice remaining for the US government is which side to back. My guess is the Kurds are going to get screwed, again.