Consolations, Fantasies, and Real Wars

Manhood Moment Almost Here. It looks like Saddam Hussein is going to be executed within an hour. In a lot of ways, this is the Bush administration and neo-con's consolation for failing so badly in the war in Iraq. Bush, Cheney, and the neo-cons may be incompetent buffoons, but they get to prove that they're bigger men than Saddam Hussein in the most definitive way possible--by executing him.

Meet the New Saddam. Given that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated so badly since the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003, it's been necessary for the neo-cons to conjure up a new enemy figure in the Middle East--Iran. Who's behind the Shiite militias? The neo-cons would have you believe it's Iran? The same with the death squads that working in Iraqi ministries. A good example of this kind of fantasizing can be seen in Joe Lieberman's Washington Post op-ed today. Also Hezbollah attacks on Israel. In fact, neo-con pundits have inflated the Iranians to such an extent that they now have the Iranians (with their Syrian lackeys) trying to create a greater Shiite empire in the Middle East. But neo-con fantasies about Iranian power and intentions are even less grounded in reality than their fantasies about Saddam Hussein. Iran is militarily weak, relatively poor, and fundamentally defensive. But neo-cons like Lieberman are going to inflate them into the next manifestation of Adolf Hitler as long as they maintain their independence from American influence.

Retaliation for Saddam's Execution. I would be surprised if there were extensive Baathist or Sunni retaliation for the execution of Saddam. The fact of the matter is that Shiite militias like the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade have had the upper hand in the sectarian terror campaigns that have going on since the bombing of the dome in Samarra last March. They would still have the upper hand in any post-execution exchanges. The new reality in Iraq is that the emergence of the Shiite militias has shifted the locus of war from Sunnis vs Americans to Sunnis vs Shiites. Although the war in Iraq is still an insurgency, it is now much more of a civil war.