A Question of Civil War

More on the brunch fundraiser for Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez that my wife, son and I attended this weekend and of which I talked some about earlier.

The first question Congresswoman Sanchez took from those of us attending was the one you hear from Republicans all the time, "What happens to Iraq if we leave before we are done?"

She answered by talking about a worker on her staff, an Iraqi woman. She said that this woman had been working in her office for a short while when everyone went out after work one night for drinks and conversation. During the after-work socializing this same question arose and the woman said, "You people really don't get it do you? You think you can stop what is happening, but you can't. We are going to have a civil war and right now you people are simply in the way. If you leave in two days, we will have the civil war in two days. If you leave in twenty years, we will have the civil war in twenty years. When you leave it will happen, it has to happen, we have to kill one another until it is out of our system. Your presence postpones it, but nothing you can do will stop it from occurring."

The next time I get asked this question, I'm going to pass along the above. Will it help? Most likely not, but maybe, just maybe the person asking the question might hear some of it. Perhaps they might hear the inevitability of it all, at least from the Iraqi perspective.