Define Progress

It's a disheartening read really, when every positive is matched or bettered by a negative. Al Maliki's government reeks of inertia and irrelevance, not to mention corruption and sectarian divides.

That we send an active Admiral to do the State Departments work is a very bad sign... if we are losing the diplomatic battle and have now to resort to militaristic bullying to force Maliki's administration into action, what does that tell us?

Maliki's fragile hold on power is bolstered only by his ability to manufacture a coalition of opposing shiite factions, as that function becomes increasingly difficult in a destabilized environment you have to wonder how long Maliki's tenure will last. Afterall, he was a compromise candidate in a stormy scene of US, Kurd and Sunni disaffection at the first choice of a shiite majority exerting its political and religious mandate unaware of its proxy status.

Now that the shiites have awakened to the political realities of US fiat and fragmentation has become the new political game in town, Maliki appears out of his depth (as do most Bush administration appointees), appearing to comply with US demands and edicts on the one side whilst ruminating upon a lack of US real-politik in the region as a whole in a brazen attempt to save face with his diminishing plurality.

The surge was designed to provide political cover for, not only, Maliki and his merry band of death squad supporting, militia friendly shiite bretheren but also for captain codpiece and his not so merry band of vascillating republicans at home.

It was a desperate strategy wholly dependent on flawed analysis and simplistic reasoning and will lead us only to another crisis where, the same mistakes will be repeated.