The Iraq insurgency is self-funding while the Iraq government is collapsing. Lebanon veers towards civil war. And even a Republican senator is saying the US has lost.

Yet there’s still some serious incomprehension about what actually happened.

From AmericaBlog, a strong supporter of Democrats

America is a full partner in a brutal religious and ethnic civil war. All because our president is an idiot, and 51% of our fellow Americans voted for that idiot a second time.

Lots of Democrats voted for and supported the war. It is delusional to pretend it’s all the fault of George Bush. And the precipitating event for the civil war was the invasion, based on lies, by the U.S., if it actually is a civil war.

Michael Moore, in an otherwise impassioned and on-target letter, jumps the track bizarrely, blaming Iraqis for not fighting back against Saddam, like that has anything to do with the U.S. invasion.

The one way that DOESN’T work is to invade a country and tell the people, “We are here to liberate you!” — when they have done NOTHING to liberate themselves.

But the invasion had nothing to do with liberating Iraq - and Moore knows that. Yet he’s saying the U.S. was their to ‘liberate’ and then gives Iraqis a gratuitous kick in the teeth. Like it’s their fault. How paternalistic (and imperialistic) of him.

Both AmericaBlog and Moore are strongly opposed to the war. Yet both suffer from the underlying assumption that the U.S. somehow needs to be there, or make amends, or be a player in the process, not understanding that events have moved beyond that. The U.S. no longer controls much of anything in the Middle East.

Before the invasion, Pat Buchanan said, “this will be the end of American empire.” That’s what we’re seeing.

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The Ulster Defense Association, a loyalist paramilitary, sent hit squads to detain, or if need be, shoot Michael Stone who they’d learned had gone off his trolley and was going to attack Stormont, thus possibly jeopardizing the Northern Ireland peace process. Thus, groups at least nominally on the same side as Stone wanted badly to stop him.

Stone in fact did bring bombs to Stormont, got nowhere, and will no doubt spend the rest of his life in prison. (He was on parole for murdering three people at an IRA funeral, so this parole violation alone may get him at least eighteen more years.)

At times like this, I always go to Slugger O’Toole, “Notes on Northern Ireland politics and culture,” for an on-the-ground view of what’s happening. They thought the whole thing veered somewhere between high farce and low farce. You can’t tell the players without a scorecard, and the Slugger is the best site I’ve found for following and attempting to understand the often incomprehensible to outsiders world of Northern Ireland politics.

Now if I could only find a site like Slugger O’Toole that dealt with the politics of Lebanon…

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The ruling class is attacking itself. Pass the popcorn, please.

Meanwhile, the war crimes lawsuit against Rumsfeld continues in Germany.

Sounds like his mojo has about run out. Dubya and Cheney must be getting a bit nervous by all this.

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He was elected in an upset and is strongly liberal

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