But I tend to be a "if it ain't broke don't fix it" type of guy with a touch of "if you done broke it, fix it already".  I also don't believe that America is broke, and I do believe that some of the Democrat initiatives to "fix" it actually "break" it.

This tends to put me at odds with most of the progressive initiatives of the left, and while I don't share the religious zeal of the religious right they seem to be more in tune with the America that I grew up with.  So jettisoning them in favor of pulling in more people from left of center is working against my desired state.

I'm not saying that the way things are is perfect, but I'm comfortable with the way that they are.  So I can empathize with the plight of some of the fringe groups on the left, I can even buy into raising awareness of their plight to buy them some additional understanding, but I don't favor major societal upheavals to accomodate them.  I don't believe in violence against anyone unless there is no other option, and that certainly extends to any of the fringe groups on the left as well.

This still IS America after all.

I think you are getting a lttle stretched out here.

You notion makes perfect sense for the counter-insurgency, especially a stupid one. Fact is, with cooperation, we would have been long gone. In fact, early, the conterinsurgency made it their mission to make sure we didn't leave.

In fact, from the beginning, I was amazed at how much we were outsmarted by al-Qaida in Iraq and the early pro-Baathists. I knew as soon as the UN pulled its mission that there would be huge problems. Had the UN had the guts to stay, with an even larger contingent, and backed up with some military muscle, the then natural instincts of most Iraqis for a peaceful transition would probably have damped the insurgency.

Further, from the beginning, the nsurgents went after the infrastructure. For the first couple of months, electricity was better than before, and many villages had electricity and clean water for the first time. But the insurgents continued to go after electrical lines and oil facilities and pipelines, something impossible to stop.

Soon, Riverbend was making an argument I also heard from some lefties here, that we could stop the insurgents if we wanted, but we either were blowing up stuff ourselves or were allowing the insurgents to do it as an excuse to stay longer. See, even Riverbend believed that if things had gone well, we would have left.

The single most effective thing was the blowing up of Shia Mosques, which lead to the sectarian violence. This too was the work of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Now, you seem to want to expand your insurgency notion to sectarian violence. So, onced agqain, let's look at your notion in reverse, at what it entails on the Iraqi side. You seem to be making an argument that the average Ahmad, when blowing up Shia, is saying to himself, "I have to blow the Shia up because the Americans are occupying the country. If I blow up enough Shia, the Americans will leave." Likewise for the Shia, when blowing up Sunni. I don't buy it.

Nor do I imply the entailed scenario, which I write from time to time. Our friend Ahmad gets up one morning and dons his belt. But his brother, Zayed, comes in and tells him that he doesn't have to go. Ahmad is insistent: "It is my appointed time to martyr myself in that Shia market. I must go." But Zayed has news. "No, my brother. The Americans left during the night. We no longer have to blow up our Shia bretheren." Ahmad takes off his belt.

Later, Ahmad and Zayed are in the streets celebrating when they come upon an old neighbor of theirs, who happens to be Shia. Ahmad speaks, "Ali, good to see you. I understand you were wounded by schrapnel when our cousin helped blow up the Mosque. Sorry about that." Ali replies, "No apologies necessary. Though we wept for our hundreds of dead, we knew that you did it to get rid of the Americans. Sad, but it was for a good cause. By the way, I am sorry that your father was killed when my group attacked your mosque." Ahmad relies, "Zayed and I bear you no ill will. We too realized that you were only killing us to get rid of the Americans. And see, it worked! Today the=y slither away like the cowards they are, like soft aprents who can bear to see their children fight among themselves. Certainly our Muslim bretheren around the world will learn from, this example, ands start killing each other wherever the Americans are. That should drive them out."

When the Americans started showing up at Iraqi blogs after the war, they often had to be reminded that iraqis were not stupid children to whom xcivilization was unknown. The hammurabi blog found it necessary to give a loing history of civiliation in Iraq. Particularly disliked was the purely prejudicial statement that Iraqis weere "unprepared for democracy." As if they needed to be trained by the likes of us latecomers.

Unfortunately, OI think your analysis has unwittingly wandered into the same territory. I don't think that iraqis think that killing Shia with suicidal attacks is the method for driving the Americans out. I think rather that most of the violence you see today in iraq is carried out willingly by iraqi actors against iraqis for reasons that have nothing to do with the occupation. It has much more to do with the al-Qaida in Iraq's persistence in seeking to rekindle sectarian hostilities. The fact that our people over there had no idea about the history of the hostilities didn't help.

In the early days after the war, optimism was high, and most bloggers pointed out that throughout central Iraq, particularly around Baghdad, tribes tended to be mixed Shia and Sunni, and many bloggers referred to cousins who were the opposite of them. They actually said that it was unjlikely that sectarian violence would arise unless it was specifically sparked by violence. many bloggers compared the Sunni-Shia divide in Islam presently as similar to the Catholic-Protestant divide of today.

They would be quickly be expelled/killed by the sunnis and shiites on 2 fronts.

I'm not so sure. They haven't been expelled from Britain, France, Spain, or any other place we know of. This is a secretive, terrorist organization. Believe me, they arehard to expel. Remember, we in the US with the best resources in the world couldn't find Eric Rudolf. If he hadn't gotten complacent and careless, he's still be out there.