US Should give Iraqis Space.

David Ignatius has an interesting article in The Washington Post today that puts up the caution light on Iraq's endless dithering over forming a new government. The US impatience with the pace of events in Iraq has been a systemic one dating from the first days of the Iraq invasion three years ago.

I am reading Cobra II and one of the cardinal themes recurring throughout the tome is American impatience, as if a war can be segmented into quarterly reports and supervised by hypertrophic bureaucrats in the WH and Pentagon [read Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld]. Yes, Jafari is a Gucci-Guerrilla dolt with no leadership capacity; but he is supported by Moqtada Al Sadr who has 30-odd seats in Parliament and a well-armed militia. As David Ignatius quotes the very wise Saudi Ambassador, "America came to Iraq uninvited. You should not leave uninvited."

The whole Iraq operation has a "hit-and-run" feel to it; sober institutional memories of experienced soldiers are over-ruled by the martinet-in-charge [Rummie] and his mountebank superior [Cheney]. These two geopoliticians obviously have forgotten their Kipling----pretty soon if leadership of the Cheney-Rumsfeld variety persists in its attempts to impose inside-the-Beltway constructs onto the messy reality of Baghdad, the US will have to recite a "Recessional" of its own.