The War in Iraq Has Ended. Now Get in There and Fight.

My friend's husband is going to Iraq. Several months after the war ended, no one told the Iraqis or, more importantly, the Shiites, Sunnis, and Al Qaeda's cancerous cells which have continued spreading. The Iraq War is over. Welcome to the Iraq War.

He's going over as the violence increases while our ability to impact it shrinks. This marks the beginning of the slow rot, the Somalian-style descent into anarchy that will flare up over the next few decades, making oil prices jump, and American presence assured for several administration.

No one will save it. Not the Dems, nor the GOP. We are now stuck, especially my friend's husband who is an Arabic translator.

The choice of strategy is clear. We can admit failure, try to unite, and speedily withdraw. This is the noble choice. Then there's the British factional choice. Pit Sunnis against Shiites, Kurds against Turks, Turks against Lebanese, Lebanese against Jordan, Jordan against radical Wahabis in Saudi Arabia, radicals in Saudi Arabia against Iran, Iran against Taliban, the Taliban against the Pakistanis, the Pakistanis against Afghanistan. Keep this circuitous cycle going and generate a constant tremor of tension that keeps both sides running for guns and bombs. Eventually all sides will be so desperate for cash to continue war that the oil fields will be more valuable to them, than to American companies. They will remain off-limits, a cash cow ensuring more violenvce. And American gas pumps will be paying for it all.

Then there are the troops. The factor we always seem to forget at our earliest convenience. They will die, get injured, suffer PTSD, and come back damaged in a never-ending cycle in which we switch off sides, backtrack, double-cross, and triple-cross our frenemies. I fear they will be dying for chess moves, for our cleverness in tactics, and for our sloppy greed.

I hope I'm wrong. But hope is the one thing that seems to be in short supply in Iraq.