One of the great lines in a Hollywood movie was when Otter tried to tell Flounder what to do after the guys had totaled his car:

Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You f****d up… you trusted us!

Sometimes one has to wonder if any of the political pundits actually think about the subject at hand.  Liberals are trying desperately to blame the disintegration of Iraq on President Bush’s failure to force Maliki to play nice with the Sunni.  I have even heard conservative’s level blame at Maliki for the same problem.  If only Maliki was more willing to share power.

Please!  I can’t find any place where Shia and Sunni were ever willing to share power.  As far as I can tell the Shia and Sunni have been at each other’s throats since around 632.  The only time they even pretended to work together was when for short periods of time they joined forces to fight a common enemy.   This was kind of like when Russia, Great Britain and the United States were allies during World War II.  Did anyone really expect them to willing share power after the war was over?  We went from World War II to the Cold War almost immediately.

This is the problem with liberal thinking.  They really believe that if we all get together and give peace a chance everything will be solved.  That, of course, has never worked.  The only way it could possibly work is if there weren’t any people involved.

There will be peace and stability in Iraq the same way it occurs anywhere else.  It will happen when someone wins and takes control.  Bush understood that which is why he sent in the surge to put Maliki in control.  Obama never figured that out, which is why we now have chaos.

What really matters is who wins.  If someone like Saddam Hussein wins, then things are peaceful, but only at the cost of personal liberty.  In the case of Saddam Hussein, he was also funding terrorists so they could kill us. That is a really important difference between Hussein and Maliki.

The miracle is finding someone strong enough to take control yet willing to yield power peacefully at some point in the future.  At a minimum try to pick a winner who doesn’t want to attack us.

In the meantime we are giving Maliki insane advice.  The following article in Time is a classic example:

http://time.com/2890134/maliki-iraq/.

Here is President Obama’s brilliant plan:

“The United States is not simply going to involve itself in a military action in the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis that gives us some assurance that they’re prepared to work together.”

So, how does this work Mr. President?  Do you really think Shia and Sunni are going to just sit around the campfire and work things out with peace and love?  Democrats and Republicans can’t even find a way to share power in this country. Neither party is remotely interested in sharing power.  The difference here is that we have a pre-determined system for determining winners and losers and a tradition of the peaceful transfer of power.

Maliki is not going to share power with the Sunni for a very simple reason.  He knows they have zero interest in sharing power with him.  If I were Maliki I would literally laugh at Obama and say:  “just like you share power with Republicans.”  Expecting Shia and Sunni to actually share power is just plain stupid.

I have researched this quite a bit and so far I have never found a situation where serious problems were solved by stupid assumptions.

TDM