The war planning Commedia Dell’Art

I think we are in a rats’ alley.
(T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922)

The first is that with no obvious contribution from London, Turkey has been granted control of the northern one-third of Iraq by Washington. To this prize is added the green light to disarm the Kurds and privileges to drill oil in Iraq’s Kirkuk region without so much as a nod towards the UK. The United States is committed to turning over Kurdish Iraq to Ankara (and is willing to accept the consequences – including the betrayal of America’s Kurdish allies) without a whimper from Whitehall. We thought that geopolitics was a subject of interest to British strategic thinkers.

The second is that the US administration announced plans to install a military governor in Baghdad to be supported by unnamed civilian staffers. Take note of what’s missing in that statement...the word, “allied.” Indeed, the British press is reporting that Bush has hand- picked a former American general, Jay Garner, for the job. It does not seem that Blair was consulted on the issue.
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Army Chief Raises Estimate of G.I.'s Needed in Postwar Iraq

The Army's chief of staff said today that several hundred thousand American troops could be required to provide security and public services in Iraq after a war to oust Saddam Hussein and disarm his military.
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PLANS FOR A POST-WAR IRAQ

RAY SUAREZ: Two top officials from the Bush administration today gave the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a broad sketch of their plans for a postwar Iraq. From the start, it was clear they faced a skeptical crowd.

SEN. RICHARD LUGAR: How long might U.S. troops conceivably remain? Will the United Nations have a role? And who will manage Iraq's oil resources? Unless the administration can answer these questions in detail, the anxiety of Arab and European governments, as well as that of many in the American public, over our staying power will only grow.
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Decisions, decisions
While we agonise about whether to go to war, the US has moved on to a different question: what next?

Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus. So says the latest hot polemic exciting transatlantic policy types: Robert Kagan's Paradise and Power, a meditation on how Europeans have grown soft and idealistic (and feminine) while the Yanks remain tough, booted and aware (like real men) of how brutal a place the world can be. According to Kagan, our outlooks have grown so far apart that it's time we stopped pretending we even "occupy the same world". We are from different planets.
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Lynda Barry
This is in Salon. Go ahead and get a free day pass — it's worth it.