Colin Powell's Unintended Genius

General Colin Powell was on Meet The Press this weekend. It was a generally uninformative interview, although it was interesting that he is actually willing to admit that he could not have gone before the UN to make the case for war if he had known then what he knows now. I like to think that it seems fairly rationally obvious that, given our original reasons for going to war (WMD stockpiles, active programs to reconstitute his nuclear program) turned out to be invalid, that we would not have gone to war if we knew then what we now know. But I understand that inside-the-Administration types are unable to make that sort of logistical leap.

Anyhow, Powell had a line which I think shows unintentional brilliance. He said (paraphrasing): "The surge is nothing more than putting a heavier lid on a pot of boiling water." Now, I know what he was trying to say, which is that a heavier lid is useful, in that it keeps the water from boiling over the edge of the pot. But it doesn't stop the boiling, which is the sectarian rage between the Sunnis and Shia.

But his metaphor says more than he knows. Any good chemist can tell you that, if you use a heavy enough lid, you actually raise the boiling point of the water. Which means that it can then get to a 'superheated' state, where you have liquid water above the boiling point at atmospheric pressure. This is how a pressure cooker works, of course. The problem is, you've now increased the pressure and the temperature of the boiling water, which means that when the boiling-over happens, which will happen eventually if you can't turn the stove off, it's much more dangerous.

This is pretty much what the surge is doing in Iraq. As I sketched out a few weeks ago in this space, the only thing that is really going to achieve a peaceful settlement of the grudges in this conflict is the passage of time, along with sufficient spatial separation to allow the hatreds to drop from a full boil to a slow simmer, to continue the metaphor. Nobody serious (unless you count Joe Biden, who I love to death but can't quite bring myself to take seriously) is suggesting establishing three separate countries/provinces/what have you, with real ethnic separation of the Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds. Things are going to just keep boiling along until we turn down the heat (i.e. separate the various peoples enough to allow them to have some form of meaningful discussions) or until we run out of water (i.e. everyone there is dead).

This reminds me that I have been meaning to sketch out the ways in which President Bush's foreign policy reminds me of the negotiation strategies of a 6-year-old. I'll plan on developing the idea a bit over time, but here's the #1 way:

When this administration tries a plan, and it doesn't work, their only solution is to try the same thing, only moreso. This reminds me of nothing so much as watching a 6-year-old head into a temper tantrum. At first, they are sniffling and tearing up a bit. They don't get their way, so they start some full-on crying. They are making people mad at this point, but still aren't getting that damn ice cream cone, and pretty soon they are laying on the floor, limbs thrashing, wailing inarticulately. But somehow, no matter how many brown people they kill...er...no matter how much they complain, the world simply refuses to conform to their wishes.