A STRANGE CALM

The late winter sun lights up The Island and spring's daffodils open to the warmth. Weekend rowers on the Sound oar soundlessly from the distant dock--Crews of teamwork striving for a clockwork precision propel themselves across the silent water--A blue heron in midstride suddenly stops propped up on one leg the other frozen in a momentarilypoised half prance/half strut before continuing his serene shoreline stroll--a potential danger passed a morning meal waits somewhere in the shallows--The white ferry on Elliott Bay backdropped by the far cityscape whales it's way toward the harbor--its' distant work composed and ordered in the early quiet--below the surface of this languid idyll another scenario rears its' gnarly head--

The ugly failure in Iraq demands recognition from its' initiators one of whom just happens to be out of town dispensing nuclear candy to a rather suddenly new ally--The insurgency grows beyond its' 'last throes' into a contagion of internecine murder spliced with eternal vows of vengeance crippling the formation of the new government--Some questions--What will the new government govern when finally chosen?--Iraq doesn't really appear to exist anymore--Sunni's and Shia disappear from mixed neighborhoods to the sanctuary of their tribe and its' militia--The full scale civil war some expected all along is a misnomer--full scale sectarian tribal anarchy is a better fit--Who is the iraqi army when and if they engage actually fighting for? A government elected but not yet formed? Are the Shia and Kurdish recruits being given combat training to combat the Sunnis? To restore an order that has not existed since the fall of Saddam? Is the U.S. courting wrath from the Shia by demanding meaningful inclusion for the Sunnis? Can the Sunnis trust a Shia/Kurd police force to protect them? Are the Sunni's overly paranoid in asking the U.S. to protect them from potential Shia genocide?