Tower of Babble Over Iraq

It’s getting very Biblical. The debate over what to do next in the Middle East is splintering into as many factions in Washington, D.C. as there are sects, militias and street gangs fighting for turf in Iraq.

The confusion of tongues has reached the point where anyone with any opinion can find chapter and verse to support it.

Stay the course? Bill Kristol and the National Review crowd will provide evidence the Surge is working, and George Bush has proof positive from every war in history that to stop killing people leads to bad things.

Get out now? Take your pick of former generals, fringe Presidential candidates and a million bloggers with unshakable arguments that the way to go is just go.

Edge out carefully? It can be done at any pace from John Warner’s to Gen. Peter Pace’s to Hillary Clinton’s to that of anyone on cable TV or talk radio.

Keep al Maliki or dump him? President Bush says the Iraqi people will decide or maybe the Neo-Cons who are pushing his replacement with cash-heavy PR campaigns.

But help is on the way. Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are coming soon to tell us all how to speak in one voice.

The No-Win War Gets Worse

Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is a drowning man encircled by sharks, who is trying cut his only lifeline by feuding with Gen. David Petraeus and asking President Bush to replace him.

His action reflects intense pressure from fellow Shiites to keep Petraeus from arming Sunni tribesmen to fight Al Qaeda insurgents from Saudi Arabia who are car-bombing U.S. troops, exposes hopes for a power-sharing central government in Iraq as a Bush pipe dream and leaves both heads of state politically trapped.

Bush is now joined at the hip with Petraeus as his only defense against growing pressure to leave by using the General’s “progress” in pacifying Iraq to keep Republican Congressmen from breaking ranks. Dumping Petraeus is unthinkable.

But al-Maliki’s bind is just as tight. Reputedly tied to Shia militias responsible for sectarian violence, the Prime Minister is far from his own man.

The resulting frustration and anger have led to “shouting matches” with the U.S. Commander, refereed by Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who only concedes that "sometimes there are sporty exchanges." Petraeus puts it less diplomatically: "We have not pulled punches with each other."

The civil war that has been predicted if the U.S. leaves is under way. What are we accomplishing by staying, other than more American deaths and humiliation over our helplessness?

George Bush's Groucho Moment

Now that Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki has suggested we’ve overstayed our welcome, the President should take a look at Groucho Marx’s classic example of a graceful exit from an embarrassing situation:

Hello, I must be going/I cannot stay/I came to say/
I must be going/I'm glad I came/But just the same/I must be going... Ta-Ta!

Protocol requires a polite response to the PM’s statement that Americans can leave “any time they want” and his top aide’s saying we are treating Iraq like "an experiment in an American laboratory."

For the sake of diplomacy, as we go out the door, we should be deaf to the complaint that our military is committing human rights violations, embarrassing the Iraqi government and cooperating with "gangs of killers" in the campaign against al-Qaeda.

But no good guest should overlook his host’s heavy hints that the party’s over. Groucho never would have. Here are our hats, what’s our hurry?