The light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq

It's not Vietnam. It's not the West Bank.

It's worse.

Think of Russia in 1941. Think of Hungary in 1956.

Think of a foreign conqueror bereft of popular legitimacy and local support, reduced to trying to kill its way out of its problems with the crudest and most violent measures imaginable.

Yes, we've joined the exalted company of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin as foreign occupiers savagely repressing local insurrections.

You may have noticed our armed forces are now in the business of killing Iraqis.

Not the "Saddam Hussein forces" we came to destroy. Not the vanquished "Ba'athist remnants" and "disgruntled Sunnis" in need of a little post-conquest mopping up. Not the "al Qaeda agents" whose threat to the precious American homeland might justify some local "Nacht und Nebel".

We're not killing (as in Vietnam) purported agents of domino-toppling world Bolshevism or (as in the West Bank) immediate threats to our security.

We're killing Iraqis. Militia members and street demonstrators thousands of miles away from where we live.

Bona fide citizens of our New Iraq. Representatives of indigenous forces that have arisen in post-conquest Iraq to protest and contest our rule.

People like new public enemy number 1 Muqtada al-Sadr.

Sadr has a whole section of Baghdad named after his father — who was martyred by Saddam's regime.

Let the U.S. media try to stigmatize Sadr as "a renegade" with "without a large following among the majority Shi'ites".

Now it's America vs. al-Sadr.

How many Iraqis will line up with us against one of their own?

Ayatollah Sistani is not going to sacrifice the precious unity and legitimacy of his movement by acquiescing to the bloody suppression of an Iraqi national figure by American troops.

Iraqi citizens will become fatally alienated from an inept and violent occupation.

We are headed toward exactly the 1979 Iran-type conditions of deeply-rooted, festering popular anti-Americanism that our "liberation" of Iraq was meant to forestall.

The government we installed is illegitimate and unable to rally public opinion on behalf of its authority. The local military forces, either by accident or design, are powerless.

Even if Chalabi and our preferred puppets manage to cling to power, they will face the continual threat of overthrow by a broadly-based popular anti-American movement.

Iraq, the secure strategic base in the Middle East that we dreamed would replace vanished Iran and shaky Saudi Arabia is instead becoming a new nexus of danger and instability.

Challenges to our occupation have quickly escalated beyond the ability of Paul Bremer and the Bush apparatchiks in the CPA to contain and mitigate them.

So it's up to the Marines and the 82nd Airborne. These are instruments of repression and intimidation, not government.

Very quickly — a year after "Mission Accomplished", George — we are in the hopeless position of defending our rule through blockades, gunship assaults, detentions, and whatever other extra-legal wonders our troops and mercenaries are performing on the Iraqi people.

Our occupation is irrevocably tainted and irretrievably doomed.

Not even the hapless IGC wants to go on record as welcoming American troops.

Absent a Status of Forces Agreement between the US and the Iraq government, clever Pentagon lawyers have found a legal rationale for our continued presence in Iraq under UN Resolution 1511. It allows for the occupation to continue until the political situation is stabilized.

When we end the occupation on June 30, the army of the supposedly sovereign state of Iraq will come under the command of "coalition forces".

In other words, Iraq will be occupying itself.

Given the division and rancor that America has exacerbated in Iraq, the logical basis for our continued presence is just as flimsy as the legal justification.

Is there any point in pretending we have a solution to the Iraq debacle?

Once we crush the Mahdist forces and capture al-Sadr, is there any future for the American presence in Iraq other than exponentially escalating Iraqi anger, new outrages, and a fresh cycle of reprisals?

Is there any point in believing that "staying the course" will impress Iraqis with the selfless nobility of our motives and acts?

Will adding a UN/Euro figleaf to our disastrous occupation distract Iraqis from its fundamental illegitimacy and vulnerability?

Nope. Not after we get done killing a few hundred Iraqis to avenge the loss of our own.

Our occupation is fatally compromised, strategically and morally. With dwindling public support in Iraq, the only initiatives available to us are bloody, oppressive, and self-defeating.

The longer we stay, the worse the situation will get and the more the Iraqis will hate us.

It's time to bite the bullet, herd the CPA staff and high-value Quislings to the roof of our HQ, fire up the evacuation helicopters, and let the Iraqis slug it out among themselves.

Will they do a worse job than we would?

With the amount of munitions available inside Iraq, local forces will easily match the violence that the coalition forces are dishing out.

Add a higher level of determination, greed, and ruthlessness one would expect from people fighting for the future of their own country, we can expect that a new strongman (assuming Saddam isn't up to the job) will appear in a year or two.

Whoever takes power will be happy to sell Iraq's oil to us (just as Saddam was), and we can do business with him.

The alternative is several years of bloody, futile occupation by a massive US force, undercut by its own distaste for the job and the growing disgust and disenchantment of the American people.

The logic of the situation says "get the hell out of Iraq".

Politics is, of course, another matter.

The only thing that will keep us in Iraq is the unwillingness of the American people and George Bush to admit a mistake.

Obviously, there is one way out — Bush must go.

And I think he will. No leader of a democracy should be able to escape accountability for a debacle of this magnitude.

During the campaign, I don't mind if Kerry spouts the politically-safe bromide that "since we broke Iraq, we have to stay there and fix it."

After his inauguration, President Kerry can simply ask the Iraqi people if they still want 100,000 US troops in their country — at their expense.

Unless we get a unanimous, unconditional Yes from the IGC, Sistani, al-Sadr, the Sunnis, and the Kurds, we're out of there.

No Bush in 2005 - and no Iraq.

It suddenly looks possible.

That's the light at the end of the tunnel.