THOU SHALT NOT BE STUPID – The Bible of Common Sense sez, “Know what you’re doing before you do it.”

Colin Powell warned the Bush administration about their twin Wars of Error with the Pottery Barn Rule – “You break it, you buy it.” Unfortunately, the Bush and Obama administrations chose long term leases with options to wreck the US economy.

In the beginning, the Crapweasel-in-Chief flexed his military muscle by starting a war on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Then, Bush the Lesser’s terminal case of ADD set the table for Operation Shit in Your Mess Kit in Iraq. As it became clearer the wars, supported by the Coalition of the Inept”, were cesspools of money-sucking, people-killing swill Bush and the Big Dick Cheney doubled down on surge and puffery.

The puffery was the worst. As regular as a cheap watch Condi Rice stood with Witless George to remind us victory was just around the corner…for 3-years running. When that message flopped, as anyone with an IQ greater than a doughnut hole could see it would, the chant became, “If we leave now Iraq and Afghanistan will descend into civil war.”

Sadly, it was one of the few prescient things to come out of the whole shameful experience. A “no-duh” revelation of mammoth proportions.

We recently snuck out of Iraq in the middle of the night and even after leaving an Army of you and I paid mercenaries behind, the place is still a mess and the fighting is heating up again. The Real War has now droned on for over a decade and the Ombamulans are ready to pull the plug there.  They will find, as many other Afghan “conquerors” have found, that keeping roving bands of war lords from slitting each other’s throats just for the hell of it is a lot harder than it looks. Chaos will follow us across the bridge out of the place next year just at it did with the Soviets.

Four years too late, the Obamunist finally sees it isn’t worth pumping money into a house with a broken foundation. He is pulling back and predictably his opponents are blaming him for the “failure” of wars he didn’t start with outcomes already set and Bush revisionism spouting like a whale pod with allergies. He may be a slow learner, but his record is 8 years to 4 in the football game of failure. Just as his Senate war vote was ill-advised and cowardly it’s better to wake up late than never.

Make no mistake, we victimized ourselves with the Pottery Rule 100-fold, but crapped on the people of both places 1000-fold. We bombed Iraq back to the Stone Age and Afghanistan back to the 6,000-year old Christian creation. The places are far more dysfunctional than before we decided to “liberate” them from a workable infrastructure and all those pesky family members. The Iraqis are returning to the same feudalism that even a despot like Hussein could barely hold together. And the Afghans are, well, about the same as before.

People are blabbering about attacking far more talented Team Iran soon. Clearly some of us have forgotten that Iran soundly whipped second-string Iraq’s ass in the War Bowl. It’s time to start planning a response better than the Wars of Error debacle lest we bomb the hell out of someone with the same negative effect as Iraqistan.

It’s another stupendous, “no duh, moment”.

Cross posted at The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!