Billmon: Squeeze Play

You probably remember the famous line from the Vietnam War: "In order to save the village, it was necessary to destroy it." We've already seen it repeated over and over again on the ground in Iraq -- so many times that even a Republican Senator from Nebraska can hear it. Now it looks like we're going to get the political version:

Shiites and Kurds were sending a draft constitution to parliament on Monday that would fundamentally change Iraq, transforming the country into a loose federation, with a weak central administration governed by Islamic law, negotiators said.

The draft, slated for action by a Monday deadline, would be a sweeping rejection of the demands of Iraq's disaffected Sunni minority, which has called the proposed federal system the start of the breakup of Iraq. Shiites and Kurds indicated they were in no mood to compromise.

Aside from the emphemeral propaganda benefits of finally having a document that can be called a constitution (and avoiding the propaganda debacle of yet another blown deadline) the United States gains nothing from this sectarian power play -- which surely won't prevent the Cheney administration and its conservative media claque from hailing it as yet another "turning point" in the war. There's always room for another illusion in the fantasy world that now passes for foreign policy in this country.