Charles Krauthammer is out of the office, but this computer program will be drafting his columns in his absence

For any of you who think you might have lockjaw, this Charles Krauthammer column will solve the problem:

The barbarism in Mumbai and the economic crisis at home have largely overshadowed an otherwise singular event: the ratification of military and strategic cooperation agreements between Iraq and the United States. . . .

For the United States, this represents the single most important geopolitical advance in the region since Henry Kissinger turned Egypt from a Soviet client into an American ally. If we don’t blow it with too hasty a withdrawal from Iraq, we will have turned a chronically destabilizing enemy state at the epicenter of the Arab Middle East into an ally.

This is patently absurd. Power is the ability to do what you want and make others do what you want. We had more power to prevent Arab-Israeli war after we flipped Egypt. Do we have more power now to prevent Iran from going nuclear than we did in 2002? No. More power to prevent Iran from boxing Israel in between Hezbollah and Hamas? No. More power at all? No. It’s as simple as that.

But wait, it gets even better.

The more long-term danger is that Iraq’s reborn central government becomes too strong and, by military or parliamentary coup, the current democratic arrangements are dismantled by a renewed dictatorship that abrogates the alliance with the United States.

Such disasters are possible. But if our drawdown is conducted with the same acumen as was the surge, not probable. A self-sustaining, democratic and pro-American Iraq is within our reach. It would have two hugely important effects in the region.

How about a self-sustaining, democratic and pro-American Pakistan? It was within our reach in 1954, 1962, 1965, 1970, 1977, 1985, 1988, 1990, 1993, 1996, 2002, 2007, and again, for the first time, in 2008. (Of course, some of those were national elections and some were presidential elections, but I guess that’s what happens when you go through three different constitutions and periods in which the president is more powerful than the prime minister and then the balance shifts in the other direction…)

Krauthammer goes on to refer to Moqtada al-Sadr as Iran’s client, though it obviously doesn’t need him to do its bidding. It has the Iraqi government for that.

Krauthammer clams that Iraq is the most important Arab country besides Egypt. No doubt they’ve got more important ways to spend their time right now, but could someone in the Pentagon please set this man straight? “Hi, Mr. Krauthammer, this is Bob Gates. I’m calling about Saudi Arabia. To say nothing of oil — and the security necessary to get it out of the ground cost-effectively — try running a defense policy in the Middle East without overflight rights to the country that occupies most of it. Have a nice day.”

Krauthammer argues that Iraq can alter the evolution of Arab society “over generational time.” What happened to a self-sustaining, democratic and pro-American Iraq being within our reach? Just how long exactly is “our reach?” Behold the miracle of the moving goalposts! Wait a few paragraphs, see the timeline stretched a few decades.

Finally, Krauthammer concludes that “the newly sovereign Iraq is more engaged in the fight against Arab radicalism than any country on earth except the United States.” Finally, a glimmer of reality. It’s just that when the rest of us see it, we think it has something to do with the fact that we gave the Shiites and Kurds an opportunity to settle old scores. You know, it’s funny, ever since I took a torch to my neighbor’s house, he’s been more engaged in fire-fighting than ever…