Shiite from Shinola

I am trying real hard to see if I can follow this. We invaded Iraq because of the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction, but we did not find any. Nonetheless, it served as a convenient opportunity to hang Saddam Hussein. Somebody needed to pay for terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., even though 9/11 was directed by Al Qaeda headquarters in the mountains of Afghanistan. Now, in Iraq, Al Qaeda sympathizers, Shiites trained and equipped by Iran, kill U.S. Soldiers. But Al Qaeda is Sunni, and Iran is Shiite. And Sunni and Shiite fight insurgent civil war against one another, with or without U.S. military targets. Didn’t we put the Shiites in charge of Iraq when we overthrew the Sunni government, disbanded the Iraqi military and police and ran them off to join the back alley militia of their choice?

So, now that I am totally confused, here comes John McCain, who does not seem to be able to keep all this straight either but says we should stay in Iraq for 50 or 100 years or until we win, whichever comes first. I am old enough, like President Bush less than a decade younger than McCain, to not want to cast the first stone about "senior moments.

I have put together the table below as an aid to the geopolitically impaired. It should be read like the menu at a Chinese restaurant back in the days when Chinese restaurants were not serve yourself All-U-Can-Eat. Pick two from column A, one from column B, and one from column C. Mix and match. Caution and thoughtfulness might be a good idea. Some combinations can be absolutely deadly, guaranteed to start a war with no end in sight.

Column A---------Column B--------Column C

Hezbollah----------Iran------------------Bush
Al Qaeda-----------Iraq----------------Cheney
Islamists----------Lebanon------------McCain
Sunni--------------Afghanistan---------Putin
Shiite-------------Syria-----------Musharraf
Shinola------------Pakistan---Sonny Perdue
Swiss Guards-------Turkey-------Mubarak
Refugees-----------Georgia----King Abdulla
US Military--------Chechnya------Rumsfeld
CIA----------------Palestine--------Limbaugh
Contractors--------Egypt-------Saddam Hussein
Taliban-------------Saudi Arabia----Bin Laden


I ran this by my beer buddy Luther. He suggested I turn it into a board game, like Clue. Professor Plum did it in the Conservatory with a Pipe Wrench. Make three stacks of cards, with the entries from each list. Cards from column A can be called Trouble, from column B Troublespots. The cards from column C we could name Potentates and Not-So-Potent-Tetes. Draw two Trouble cards. One from each of the others. Luther says call the board game Clueless. The first Not-So-Potent-Tete to draw cards for Shiite and Shinola and who does not know the difference will be hopelessly unable to define exactly what constitutes winning. If you draw George, let the next guy handle it, Bush in combination with Iran and any U.S. military, intelligence agency, or private security contractor, you get to launch an October Surprise and bomb a suspected nuclear facility two weeks before the general election. Draw the Dick Cheney card, you can look straight in the eyes of the 80 percent of America who opposes the War in Iraq and just say, “So?”

Copyright 2008 by William C. Cotter