Now that the killing in Iraq has become so pervasive and unquenchable, with Sunnis and Shiites avenging every death with more death, the US and the world are seeing how the self-destructive forces in a society sometimes are the most powerful. Pundits are saying that the US is stuck, that if we pull out we are damned and if we stay we will be caught up in a civil war.

Political reality has yet to catch up with the fog of war. There is no ally in Iraq to support, and we cannot count on Sunni Arabia or Shiite Iran to lend us a hand. In the Arab world, only tribalism, humiliation and honor count. Defeat does not mean “we win” it means “you lose”. Syria and Iran, temporary friends, want the US to fail. But they paradoxically don’t want Iraq to go down in flames. They just want the experiment in democracy, and the long arm of the US, to get out.

We don’t really care about civil rights and freedom. Those are just words, like gift wrap on a missile, to justify interference in the government of a sovereign nation. If we truly were embarking on a Jeffersonian project in the Muslim world, we would not support Saudi Arabia, Libya and Pakistan.

We turn a blind eye to the double dealings of Musharif, yet we condemn the so called, Axis of Evil.

We need the Axis of Evil. We need everyone. We have to persuade and reach out to all the nations of the world, because we have MORE POWER that way. Our morality is only evident to ourselves. The rest of the world sees us as the fallen angel who has taken up arms to advance the word of Bush.

And we all know how well Bush speaks…….