The "You Broke It you Bought It" analogy

IMO "it" wasn't ever one "it" in the first place. Iraq in its current form was, is, and will be for the foreseeable future THREE DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. The only way to peace is to understand that simple fact, which has now been stated by Presidential candidates all the way from Brownback to Biden. Our strategy is wrong because by erecting the super-expensive SUPER-Embassy we're assuming a continuation of one-Iraq, and the only way to have that is a brutal and large government, as Saddam proved for decades.

The UN doesn't want one country that was always three to turn back into three countries, ESPECIALLY the various UN members like Iran, Turkey, and the other 2 in Iraq (Shiastan & especially Sunnistan under Saddam!) which all have a sordid history of trying to kill every single Kurd they possibly can. If Kurds suddenly get a voice and a vote, they can say much more loudly just how brutal Turkey & Iran have been, since everyone already knows about Saddam's attempts to gas them all to death. They'd also get to vote.

As "Iraq," the people (who still consider themselves Sunnis, Shias, or Kurds rather than Iraqis, IMO) have a LOT of old scores to settle. Stealing from the Iraq government, if one gets a chance, is a tempting way to settle such old scores. Those old scores which have caused so-much corruption would be much less of a factor if there were no-longer an Iraq, so if you were stealing from the smaller new governments you'd effectively be stealing from YOUR OWN TRIBE. This tends NOT to happen, because as a Sunni, Shia, or Kurd your beef was against Iraq -- not your hopeful, tiny, new country. Will a split into 3 countries make Iraq a safe place for US tourists? Not right away, but considering Vietnam, probably during the remainder of my lifetime IF we don't screw it up...
JMR

PS I don't understand why, but the socialists of The Nation sometimes get one right, and this piece, despite the partisan headline, is one of those times.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041101/klein

It sure seems like a bipartisan money-scandal to me....

Let's look at this analogy a little closer. Huckabee is comparing the war in Iraq to breaking a little toy in the store. That sounds to me like he is saying he shouldn't have been playing with the toy in the first place. Without even realizing it, Huckabee is the first of the "bewildered 8" to come over to Ron Paul's side. He says it himself. If he hadn't played with the toy in the first place, it would never have been broken. He admitted on national TV that the United States should never have gone into this war.
Next he says that his mother made him fix the problem by buying the broken toy. Someone needs to tell Mr. Huckabee that his "mommy" in the White House is the American people speaking through their representatives, and the money he's spending to save face for his idiotic action happens to be the lives of young American men and women.
Huckabee, you had it partly right; we shouldn't have gone in the first place. But your twisted and demented solution of killing our kids so you can buy back your "TOY" and save face makes me want to vomit.

Instead of just breaking an item in the shop, we're breaking the whole shop, and we can't afford it.