… so what do you want to do today, Ali?
Oh, I dunno. What do you want to do, Ahmed?

“BAGHDAD, July 31 (Reuters) – Six bombs exploded within minutes near Shi’ite mosques across Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 26 people and wounding scores of others …”

Thanks to President Obama, it seems that we are actually emerging from the idiot Bush’s war in Iraq. There was never a good reason for being there in the first place, and the only reason we’re still there at all is the Pottery Barn rule. (Would you believe that Wikipedia even has a page about that too?)

Maybe we should count ourselves lucky. Vietnam cost the lives of 55,000 Americans. (And for what? If anybody has an answer, I’d like to know what it is.) So far, we’ve only lost 4,247 Americans in Iraq to date.

But don’t expect things to be peace and flowers after we’re gone. The very best we can hope for is a country that isn’t a clear and current threat to the US. And I’m not too sure we’ll actually get even that much. After all, one result of our occupation will be that the Shi’ites, who are about two-thirds of the population, are now firmly in control. (Saddam Hussein was a Sunni.) An impartial reading of history in the Middle East, or in dozens of other parts of the globe, predicts decades of majority oppression of the minority; along with savage resistance of the minority. (St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre for example, to pick on our own history for a change.)

Since Iran is resolutely Shi’ite, it’s almost predictable for Iraq to drift into their orbit and become part of a block united against, well, maybe us. It really depends on how much we stick our nose in where we’re not wanted. The Sunni powers of the region include Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, even Afghanistan. In other words, just about everybody except Iraq and Iran. Given the strategic importance to America of the Sunni parts of the Muslim world, it would be easy for us to drift into an anti-Shia orbit.

And you never understood why Iran wants the bomb so much!

Still, President Obama has his foreign policy priorities right. The war in Afghanistan is still worth fighting. For one thing, that’s where bin Laden is. Maybe the idiot Bush can’t find the right country on a map, but I still can. But more importantly, India and Pakistan are emerging powers that have enormous potential to ignite a world war. And there is a real possibility that we can actually snatch peace from the jaws of war there … if Pakistan isn’t divided internally by civil war between islamists and the rest of the country. The government of Pakistan must be secure enough to negotiate a settlement in Kashmir. Afghanistan may not have any resources worth fighting for, but they have always been one of the principal crossroads of the world and they still are. They don’t have much to give, but they have enormous potential to take.

Bin Laden counted on Americans having short memories and limited perspective. Let’s not prove him right.