So Funny It's Painful

When I was a wee little lad, one lesson my mother taught me was that if I made a mess, I had to clean it up before I could go outside and play. It was my "responsibility," she said, and a sense of responsibility was something all adults needed.

Obviously my mother never met George W. Bush.

For the last several weeks the Bush administration has been working to reach some sort of long term security deal with Iraq. This new agreement was needed for two reasons.

First, the current United Nations resolution allowing the presence of American troops in Iraq expires on December 31st. Even the U.S. Congress' authorization for Bush's Iraq adventure is tied to that U.N. resolution. So unless a new, separate agreement is reached with the Iraqi government, the continued presence of American troops in Iraq would become illegal under both international AND American law.

Secondly, with Bush leaving office in January, he has been increasingly desperate to come up with some sort of lasting legacy. A long term security agreement with Iraq, allowing for several large, permanent American military bases in that nation, looked to be his last hope.

Unfortunately, the Iraqis have not been cooperating. They apparently feel that the presence of foreign troops only continues to further aggravate the situation in Iraq--something many war opponents on OUR side of the Atlantic have been saying for the last several years.

Consequently Al-Maliki's government has demanded a concrete timetable for the departure of American troops as part of any long term security agreement. The Bush people, in their eternal wisdom, have not been willing to grant them that.

Any hope for that long term deal is now officially dead. The Bush administration has now decided to settle for some sort of temporary "bridge" document that will allow U.S. forces to remain in Iraq beyond the end of the year. But any long term agreement will now have to be negotiated by whoever takes office on January 20.

Translation: Let the next President clean up Bush's mess.

So after five years of war, after wasting the lives of 4118 (and counting) American soldiers, after causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, after destabilizing the entire Middle East, after fueling the rage of anti-American Islamic militants worldwide, after pissing away a trillion dollars, and after leaving our nation's credibility among the international community in tatters, Bush won't have a single goddamn thing to show for it.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.