What now?

What do we do if the feared and anticipated civil war in Iraq has begun?

Let's put that serious and perplexing question aside for a sec, and ask a much easier question.

Will the Bush administration say that this was unforeseeable?

Like the breach of the levees in New Orleans? Like Hamas' electoral coup? Like the lethargic rollout of the prescription drug plan? Like the Iraqi insurgency itself? Like everything else that the administration has undertaken or neglected to undertake, contrary to the predictions of the bulk of disinterested experts? If the polar caps melt tomorrow, the Bush administration will say no one could have anticipated it. Straightfaced.

If the shit goes down, it's not because of dissent in the States, insufficient executive power, questions about Abu Ghraib, or Bush Derangement Syndrome. It's because we could not provide security to Iraq. It's because we inexplicably planned for a brief, hands-off military conflict, to be followed by showers of gratitude and oil, or didn't plan at all. It's because billions of reconstruction dollars disappeared or were wasted. It's because although people saw voting as their "only best option", democracy has no inherent allure to an insecure and oppressed population - at least not enough allure to excuse us of any of the hard work of stepping in and running a country until it can run itself.

No disrespect to the troops. This goes straight to the command. The responsibility for this massive, foreseeable, and foreseen failure does not lie at all with them.

Now, if things break down like they look like they are about to, we will need to commit many more troops, or abandon ship. Because those will be our only choices, not because of Paul Bremer, Senator John Murtha, or anyone else who has sounded the alarm to the ridicule and scorn of the right wing. What we have there is not going to cut it. Get ready for hard choices that would have been significantly less hard had we acted on our best information, instead of political expediency, say, three years ago.

UPDATE:

I forgot to include one unfortunate event that the Bush administration was warned about, but after it occurred, claimed was unforeseeable. Caffeinated beverage to whoever can guess what that was.