Lunch Update.

Remember this?

"Part of the reason why there's not this instant democracy in Iraq is because people are still recovering from Saddam Hussein's brutal rule," Bush said. "Sort of an interesting comment, I heard somebody say, `Where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas."

The head-slapping laugh, in case some of you missed it, is that the President has now resorted to blaming lack of progress on a dead man*. Get it? Don't he understand how stupid that makes him sound?

Everything would be just fine for those purple-finger wavers -- "Mission Accomplished!" -- if only the country's savior hadn't been already killed, is the new excuse.

Or perhaps:
it's because there have been no democratic traditions in that region, that you can't promote democracy by gunpoint in chaos where so many residents have daily security worries. That no matter how you hope and wish and think and believe you can remake a place in your own image, you have to be realistic and work with what's there.

Prediction:
eventual partitioning of the three peoples -- Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis. They managed to live together under Saddam, it seems, because the minority Sunnis held power and the majority Shiites were the majority. And the Kurds had no other choice if they wanted to live. Dictatorships can work like that.

It's not any country's place though to destabilize another, and foment a revolution. That was our mistake -- which yes, there were many who foresaw -- from Day One. The Iraqi people didn't call for this, doing the work themselves and calling on Americans to provide support. That would have been akin to the early Americans calling on Hessian troops for support.

No, we went in because our leaders were convinced they knew best. They made promises, and can't deliver.

You'd think our national leader, of all people, wouldn't be so simplistic. For most of us, hoping/wishing/dreaming for a pony just doesn't bring one. It's great the promises we heard: independence for the women, American style participatory democracy, people overthrowing shackles, and leaders just springing up in the peaceful democratic traditions to persuade and lead. Not happening though.

I wonder what the excuse will be next year?
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*Saddam Hussein, in case I do have to spell it out.