AAAH!, cont.

Went out for a bit, came back, still angry about Bush. Here's a basic lesson in Iraqi politics, circa 2007:

On the one side, you've got the American Armed Forces. Whatever their long-term plans are, they involve American troops stationed in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Then, you've got the Iraqi people. They want the Americans gone. Like, yesterday.

In a September poll conducted by the University of Maryland, 78% of Iraqis feel that the U.S. military is provoking more conflict than it is preventing. To make matters worse, 71%, which includes 74% Shiites, and 91% Sunnis, want the U.S. out of Iraq within a year or less. Last, but not least, 61% of Iraqis favor attacks on U.S. troops.

Both camps are heavily armed. And what do we call it, children, when two armed groups have mutually exclusive political objectives, and try to resolve them by resorting to violence?

That, children, is what we call a "war".

Whether Bush likes it or not, he has put the united states at war against, not "for", the Iraqi people.

The American policy in Iraq won't fail because of Iraqi "ingratitude" or "laziness".

The American policy in Iraq will fail because the Iraqis have an achievable goal (an American-free Iraq) and the Americans don't.

If, four years in to this mess, Bush still doesn't understand this, he is truly damned.