Americans should really read this article from the Sunday Observer of London, discussing the latest terrorist outrages in Iraq.

On the one hand, every thinking and informed person, who has not been fooled, is perplexed, repulsed and horrified at the carnage inflicted upon the people of Iraq by those suicide terrorists setting off car and truck bombs among civilians. On the other hand, that same informed individual from America or Europe is disgusted with Dick Cheney and George Bush and with their treasonable band of “neocons” for invading Iraq in the first place and employing a pack of lies to do it. The writer of The Observer article tries to make sense out of all this. He does as well as can be expected under the circumstances. You can’t make sense out of madness.

The situation is an absolute shambles. You have civil wars within a civil war, in addition to a determined and resourceful guerrilla war against a foreign invader. In this foolish enterprise which the U.S. Senate authorized, Cheney and Bush continue to perpetuate yet another fraud every time they talk about “victory” under such circumstances. It is not our troops against the bad guys. It is our troops stuck in the midst of chaos and among homicidal maniacs, many of whom are religious fanatics, who are trying to kill each other, in addition to killing us. It is a triangulation from hell. William Pfaff made the important observation in a recent column from Paris (April 12th) that “The war of the fundamentalists is against other Moslems. It is not primarily a war against the West, which the extremists could not possibly win, and which concerns them only so far as the West interferes in the Moslem world.” That is part of the equation in Iraq. We’ve got Sunni fundamentalists and Shia fundamentalists and al-Qaeda fundamentalists all trying to kill us and each other.

Looking at it strictly from the perspective of the West, as outsiders, Cheney and Bush have certainly created more problems in Iraq than they solved by invading Iraq. Aside from Cheney, Bush, their diehard “neocon” associates, and assorted fools who still take Rush Limbaugh and Condoleezza Rice seriously, everybody I hope would have to agree with that premise. It is an objective fact. If ever there were an argument in favor of a U.S. foreign policy based upon “isolationism”, it’s got to be the upshot from “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. Walk softly, and mind your own business—for the sake of humanity and for your own well being. Maybe that is what Washington, Jefferson and Madison had in mind from the start.