these people really are idiots. do they not understand that the government of iraq and shia militias are fundamentally identical? what impresses you after awhile is the unbelievable sluggishness of thinking; they're always two years behind the events. meanwhile, their actual policy intitiatives consist of phraseology: replacing "stay the course" with, i don't know, "beat me." they'll still be nurturing a young democracy after they've lost control of the whole country (and they're already close), and as iraq is de facto partitioned between a shia theocracy, a ba'athist sunni triangle, and an independent kurdistan. in the middle of a years-old civil war, they will be closely examining the theory of counter-insurgency, hoping to respond to events from 2004. too gutless to win, and too gutless to admit defeat, they will linger for decades, muttering catch-phrases and thus imposing death. we suffer (a) from gigantism: there's no lever in the world capable of moving this beached, reeking whale of a bureaucracy: that's the idiot inertness of the superpower. and (b) from politics: where we're trafficking in symbols and lies rather than in war and peace.