Fred Kaplan lays out the depressing state of play in Iraq, where various internal groups have turned to combat, and where there's no obvious role for the US to play or horse for us to back. It's probably boring by now to constantly remind people that as the Surge has gone on, the Bush administration has eschewed a strategic approach for tactical goals that lead nowhere but are achievable through military force and are popular here at home. The result is situations like this one, which exposes how orthogonal the surge is to the factors that actually dictate stability in Iraq.
