Robert Fisk nails it
Will the U.S. be defeated in Iraq before the election, or after it? That is the all-important question now. Not if, but when.
Fisk makes it plain the U.S. and Britian no longer control the country, period. Alawi is the mayor of parts of Baghdad, under siege. It is not getting better, it is getting worse day by day.
But is it getting worse fast enough to doom Bush's chances for reelection?
In the U.S. major media, no one reports
the real situation. What deeply symbolic event in Iraq would compel them to acknowledge the total failure of the war? The prison scandal came close, because it robbed the U.S. of any moral high ground, indeed of its last defensible reason for being there at all. But it wasn't quite enough.
Nixon played out a lost war for several more years. He escalated it by carpet-bombing a neighboring country, Cambodia, which lead to the killing fields there, and the slaughter of literally millions of innocents. Let's see, neighboring countries. Iran, or Syria... if Bush is reelected, look out! If Kerry is elected, well, come to think of it, that's actually closer to the Nixon scenario, isn't it? I'd say look out in either case.
My guess at this point is that with the help of vote fraud, Bush will win in November unless an unspinable, catastrophic, helicopters-off-the-roof-of-the-embassy defeat in Iraq arrives before then. He still has the press spinning for him, and too many Americans are still asleep.
Defeat by November is a tall order, even for an insurgency which has the tide in its favor. The U.S. military ought to be able to fight a rear-guard action for three more months. In Vietnam, they proved able to do so more or less indefinitely, until Kissinger finally liked the terms and the political moment, and gave the word to get out.
But then there's the wild card. What will Al Qaeda do? In their place, what would you do? Remember, despite all the speculation that they thrive on Bush because he "energizes their base", what they want now is not just jihad but a resounding defeat for the U.S. and Britian, as a direct result of having dared to attack an Islamic country. They want to win a real one. 9/11 was a great symbolic victory, but they would love to win an actual war, the way the North Vietnamiese did against us. Imagine the power the Islamic world would derive from that kind of victory.
So, maybe look for Al Queda to attack in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia perhaps, or in any Gulf state providing logistical support for the war. Not on U.S. soil, but where the war is now. That inlcudes allies who can be driven away, as Spain was, and may include Britian. They'll take out Alawi if they can, or anyone helping him look real, if they can't. They'll look for that symbolic master stroke that makes it all seem futile to the American public, no matter how the U.S. press spins it.
I don't have a clue what form exactly that kind of strike might take. It would probably be off center, where we're unguarded -- not the usual truck bombing in Baghdad, surely. Assassinations perhaps, rather than trying to match the U.S. military's scale of violence.
What would you do in Al Qaeda's place? Seriously, that's the responsible question to ask now, because it could well be tomorrow's news.