FRIDAY AROUND-THE-HORN.

(updated as my goddamn job permits)

• Always forward-looking, Reihan Salam gets out front among the "third-time's-the-charm" Iraq War fans with "We Should Never Have Left Iraq." Never mind that our contract signed by George W. Bush with fucking Iraq was that we'd leave by 2011 -- which Salam does his considerable best to obfuscate:

So why did the U.S. leave Iraq at the end of 2011? Part of it is that many within the Obama administration simply didn’t believe that U.S. forces would make much of a difference to Iraq’s political future. 

That loud noise was your bullshit detector exploding. It's not like he doesn't know the Status of Forces Agreement exists, because just last year he told Vice's Eddy Moretti:

REIHAN SALAM: I think that in my ideal world-- and I'm way,way out of the political mainstream on this issue. I personally think I would have wanted to have a larger American presence in Iraq even now. So one thing is that we didn't wind up negotiating a status of forces agreement that would have kept a substantial number of US military personnel in Iraq.  Now, this is a crazy view, right? Because everyone is like, we want to wash our hands of Iraq, period.

Yeah, that's what everyone was like, Reihan. Anyway, Salam's best argument is that Brent Scowcroft didn't want to go to war in Iraq, but once we did he wanted us to stay there and finish the job:

Though Scowcroft was confident that the U.S. could succeed in destroying Saddam’s regime, he was also confident that military action would be expensive and bloody, and that it “very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation.” As we all know, Scowcroft’s warning went unheeded by the Bush White House. 

Scowcroft offered another warning in America and the World, a widely ignored book published in 2008 that collected a series of exchanges between Scowcroft and his fellow foreign policy wise man Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Boy, how'd we all miss that gripping read?

Recognizing that Iraq remained riven by communal conflict, Scowcroft argued that the country would continue to need a U.S. military presence for at least a few more years.

Number 1: TEN YEARS. WE'VE BEEN THERE OVER TEN FUCKING YEARS. Number 2: He's Brent Scowcroft. What the fuck's he going to say? "Yeah, we fucked up, guess we're just going to have to leave those poor people to drown in suck." Scowcroft has to play the Wise Man (character requirements: Grey eminence, nice suits; must have both One Hand and The Other Hand) because that's what he's paid to play. Whereas those of us who told these idiots what a clusterfuck they were in for back in the day got called traitors by Andrew Sullivan.

Being right about these things has its quiet advantages but I gotta admit, I'd love to know what it's like to keep being wrong all the time and still get paid.

• Remember Michael Totten, one of the more passive-aggressive warbloggers of yore? Well, he ain't changed a bit:

Arab governments complain when we intervene and they complain when we don't intervene. Basically, they complain no matter what. So asking what they want is pointless. It takes a while to notice this trend over time, but there it is.

No one likes us/I don't know why/We may not be perfect/But heaven knows we try...

“We’ll kill you if you mess with us, but otherwise go die” is not even close to my preferred foreign policy, but it’s what President Barack Obama prefers (phrased much more nicely, of course) and it’s what the overwhelming majority of Americans prefer, including most liberals as well as conservatives.

Translation: The liberals are always to blame, especially for refusing to support, as I demanded they do, this occupation which I am belatedly rejecting.

Still, it’s only a matter of time before we get sucked in kicking and screaming one way or another. Because the Middle East isn’t Las Vegas. What happens there doesn’t stay there.

Prediction: Some months hence, Totten will demand we re-re-invade Iraq to clean up the mess Barack Obama made. And, shortly thereafter, protest babes!

• If you're looking for new and exciting ways to spin the third-time's-the-charm Iraq re-re-invasion strategy, National Review's Jim Geraghty would like to show you the thisclose maneuver. It's like a cross between the Ticking Time Bomb Scenario and the Butterfly Effect:

...what if the Iraqi government is just short of being capable of pushing back ISIS? Is it worth withholding our assistance to make the point that they need to be independent? How much can fear of future scapegoating limit our options in the here and now?

Just get them over the hump, then you can leave! Then some other exotically-named menace will threaten, then we go back; then we return, then some other exotically-named menace -- it's the military equivalent of shuttle diplomacy.

Bonus dick move from Geraghty:

If we really are going to adopt a philosophy of “we could help you, but we suspect you’ll grow dependent upon us and blame us for problems down the road,” could we please apply that to domestic spending programs as well?

Haw! Stupid libs want to feed paupers when there are Iraqi citizens to re-re-liberate! Doesn't the Constitution apply to them, too?