Iraq, amnesia and geographic ignorance

Andrew Sullivan forgets that Americans only learn geography when there is an active war, earthquake, tsunami or a missing nubile blond.  He worries that there is a large and currently unmotivated bloc of people in the US who will rally behind a stabbed in the back or perfidious liberals who threw away a victory argument as Iraq continues to be a violent rentier society with minimal social-political cohesion or the institutions to build that cohesion:

But I’m not so sanguine about the reaction in the US if all those deaths and all that cost and all that damage ends up empowering a Shiite pseudo-strongman, with torture prisons and rigged elections. Anarchy is on the march.

An Iraq with a Shi’ite strongman who is willing to use all elements of state-power to protect himself and his coalition was a probable long term outcome of the US invasion of Iraq.  It was forseeable in 2002 by the dirty fucking hippies, and extraordinarily likely by August 2003 when Sistani imposed his veto on post-invasion US plans.

The dirty fucking hippies will remember and they will be the only ones who will remember history the next time America has a collective freak-out and decides to throw some insignificant, weak country up against the wall to tell it to suck on this.  Anyone who believes in Dolchstoss will believe in it no matter what actually happens.