Before the Golden Mosque

Oh, I know this will sound to Ann Coulter that I want to restore Saddam Hussein to power, but Ann doesn't read ATGD.

After generations of U.S. foreign policy that played Pick Your Despot, some bright boys decided we could just remove one we didn't like and Give Iraqis Freedom. Now the Sunnis and Shiites are showing us that our Red State/Blue State politics is just pattycake. And exporting democracy to a tribal society that measures grievances in centuries is not a task, it turns out, for a C student who got his first real job just over a decade ago.

Instead of leaving Saddam to murder Kurds and Shiites, we eliminated the middle man. With an assist from al-Qaeda and rigid sectarianism, there's now equal-opportunity madness. Saddam was a bad critter, but al-Qaeda set up shop in Afghanistan, not Iraq, and all the mosques were still standing.

Trying to fix something you've wrecked is an admirable trait, but this calls for the mother of all insurance adjusters to tell us whether this one is totaled.

What's happening in Iraq today is profoundly sad, and it didn't start with the Golden Mosque.