FRONTLINE: the insurgency: watch the full program.

The Austrailian guy with the copyrights all over everything (Michael Ware) seems like a bit of a boaster, but given the situation for journalists over there it wasn't as though Frontline had a plethora of sources to pick from.

The report tries to be positive, and it would be great if Col. McMaster's point of view had been shared up and down the chain of command from day 1, but given recent events, I don't think we're going to get a happy ending. Even if we dodge the rumbling civil war for another year, the occupation can go on and on for a lot longer and still not work out. The British occupied/created Iraq over a period of 35 years, and they were left with nothing.

I honestly don't see how we can hope to do any better, especially given our occupation's lack of sustainablility. In large part because the war was concieved with a level of due dilligance and objectivity that rivals the planners behind pets.com, and in large part because it's simply a terrifically bad idea to go and invade countries that didn't invade you first, the strategic position we're in is a big-time loser. We're $250B in the hole so far, and the total human toll -- the effects of death, attrition, and future medical care for the wounded --- is going to push that much higher, two to four times higher, even if we could magically pull out right this second.

We simply cannot affort to keep this show running for much longer, and stubbornly pursuing the Tinkerbell Strategy (Clap louder! It'll work out!) is fucking ignorant, not to mention cruel. It's not as morally monsterous as when palace-dwelling generals in Europe fed millions into the trench-war meat grinder in WWI, but it's just about as stupid.

We should be looking at how to bring our occupation of Iraq -- and I would argue the majority of our military presence in the entire region -- to an end. It's going to happen. Empire isn't sustainable over time, and it's not really even the right idea to pursue. The question is whether we redeploy on our own terms or whether we continue burning our future prospects in pursuit of some spectre of Pax Americana.