"If you break it you own it"

I am inclined to agree with that sentiment - if you do the crime, you do the time.

But what does that mean? Does that mean we are condemned to live with it forever? Does that mean condemning Americans who were not complicit in the conspiracy to break it to death or dismemberment? Without question, America as a nation "owns" guilt for this atrocity - just as Japan does for its aggression against China and Germany does for invading Poland.

They were defeated, and rightly so. They have been "forgiven" by the community of nations. They both stuck it out until they were crushed, the leaders who had perpetrated the aggression removed. They did not end up "owning" the areas they "broke" because they were even more broken.

Our current administration, just like the stubborn leaders of those countries back then, would rather take the country down in flames than admit it was wrong. We have two choices. Throw them out, or wait for the world to do it.

If we stop adding insult to injury, the administration claims even greater chaos and carnage would ensue in Iraq; that is the only remaining rationalization for continuing to pick at the sore of what we caused. The result they predict of withdrawal, though, would seem to be inevitable unless we were able to accomplish miracles of social engineering never before achieved in the history of humanity. Or maintain a permanent occupation.

So what really can be expected, what can be done, to fast-forward past our presence to some acceptable future state?

Living in Iraq before we stepped in was no dish of tea but it was not absolute chaos. These are the same people. Same ancient animosities. Why is it a given that they will continue to self-destruct?

Consider Iraq now to be loosely analogous to the US during our civil war. Thousands killed daily. Towns in ruin. Raids at unpredictable times. For a large part of the country, no normal life - schools, businesses, agriculture all in the crapper while people just worry about 'kill or be killed." Sherman's "march to the sea" was a series of atrocities perpetrated by the US Army on behalf of the US government against US citizens. It included the burning of Atlanta, many smaller towns, countless farms, the rape and murder of civilians. The hatreds of southerners for "damn yankees" and of northerners for "johnny rebs" was profound.

100 years later there were plenty of cars with "forget, hell" front license plates and bumper stickers (see below), and the arguments over flying the confederate flag continue. Race relations have certainly improved in 150 years, but we are far from fully healed.

But dammit, should we have had a foreign occupation to keep us from each others throats? Should the French have intervened in, say, 1863, and tried to build a wall around Atlanta to keep Sherman out? Should they have instructed Lincoln on whom to include in the cabinet, or lectured Lee on tactics?

The aftermath was not a bloodbath like Cambodia. Does that mean our largely western-European ancestors were somehow more "civilized" than Southeast Asians, or Bosnians? No, it just means that we happen to have had a more-clearly-defined territorial dispute, and the dominant ethnicity on both sides was the same. Luck of the draw. The aftermath within the south, with lynchings and cross burnings for the next hundred-plus years is just a hint of what would have been the case if the dispute had had more-clearly-defined ethnic lines. Had African Americans been more actively involved in the war, or less valuable as cheap labor even when no longer officially enslaved, I venture to say that the aftermath of Lincoln's assassination would have been rampant carnage, vengeance killings, "ethnic cleansing" etc. across the south.

We also had a "safety valve" wherein many former soldiers from both sides went west, made new lives as cowboys, and took out their frustrations massacring Native Americans. Probably a much larger "ethnic cleansing" than anything that might happen in Iraq.

It required a "surrender" of one side and official cessation of hostilities, which does not appear to be on the near horizon in Iraq, but our presence is NOT going to bring that accord any sooner. Not by one minute.

My point is, we do not hold the moral high ground. Claiming somehow that the Iraqis are inferior human beings incapable of settling their differences without us is hubris in the extreme. I debated whether to include the license plate below since it could be misinterpreted. But it makes a point. The people who like it aren't Arabs, aren't Native Americans, aren't African Americans. You could not tell them, genealogically, from most of the arrogant bastards claiming some sort of elite status as the rightful heirs to world domination, assuming a paternal role, insisting on a "unitary presidency". Those people are basically skinheads in suits.

Iraqis have just as many brain cells as western Europeans. Arabs developed science and philosophy while western Europe was still a bunch of ignorant savages. We have vastly diminished our standing in the world community, and stand to make it much worse if we conduct eighteen more months of this.

Following the analogy of "you break it, you own it," we are now like the kid who knocked something off the shelf which has shattered into a thousand pieces, down on our hands and knees trying to gather the pieces and reassemble them on the shelf so no-one will know. Sorry, Charlie, that genie won't go back in the bottle.

Yes, we broke it, and now we need to step back and let it heal. It may be painful to watch, and maybe we can help to broker some sort of voluntary partitioning rather than a bloodbath. We "own" the responsibility for that, and we have a moral obligation to get on with it. How it will play out is not predictable. Nothing in life is. It won't be the same as post-WWII, and it won't be the same as post Civil War. They don't have the American West to flee to. They don't have as distinct a Mason-Dixon line. We can hope desperately and strive fervently to make it better, not worse, than it now is, sooner rather than later.

The American people elected democrats last fall to bring about change. We collectively are agonizing over having done this, and want to start making it better. We look to the world like that deranged kid in Virginia. We agonize over the dead and maimed Americans being shipped home every day, but we also agonize over the many, many more Iraqis suffering the same fate every day.

So congratulations to Harry Reid for telling it like it is, and shame on everyone who continues to scramble about on the floor trying to assemble the pieces.


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very careful to not break anything, yet...

I didn't break it either.

America as a nation DID break it, and Colin Powell's warning was prescient.

Of course lots of us opposed breaking it. Most off the kids now being killed and maimed were too young to vote six years ago. And bush was not elected, etc., etc.

Those are all great excuses for denying any personal culpability. I don't argue that point. But as a patriot, as someone who wants once again to be able to feel proud to be an American, I insist that we MUST encourage Harry Reid (I just saw another post about the poor support for him) , Jack Murtha, et al to speak out louder and more often. This is NOT just politics, just vying for who gets to control the "pork". The very future of our republic is at stake.

My point was that despite the fact that America "broke it," the remedy is NOT to attempt, as bush is doing, to deny that "we" (he) broke it, but to make the best of a sorry situation. And that calls for acknowledging the facts as a nation, and attempting to move on. We have an obligation to crush the bastards who stole the presidency and are systematically gutting our constitution with every intention of establishing themselves as world dictators. As I said, they are skinheads in suits, and we have a crisis on our hands NOW. It is inadequate to "ride it out" for eighteen more months, while more death and destruction continues and the dismantling of our government continues.

We owe it to ourselves and the world to start righting this wrong NOW. We already have the legacy of having condoned/tolerated/implemented slavery, of having massacred the Native Americans, of having interfered in other countries internal affairs, including supporting coups and assassinations.

This current atrocity is still ongoing, and the perpetrators are still in charge. Their ONLY excuse for continuing it is to claim it will be even worse when they stop. So they don't want to stop until they are out of office and can blame it all on someone else. This CANNOT BE ALLOWED.