A few scant weeks ago, the Democrats, still searching for a charismatic avatar amid the many briny heads bobbing across a sea of feckless ineptitude, seemed nonetheless poised to take back Congress. Homeland Security’s equivocal D.C. budget cuts notwithstanding, the White House, citing the imminent threat posed by the three Is — not Iraq, Iran and irradiation but rather investigations, impeachment and incarceration — went on red alert. In hindsight, yellow would have been the more apt choice as Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald dragged Karl Rove through five arduous grand jury appearances for nothing more than a hall pass and a cup of coffee. Emboldened by Fitz’s trepidation and the inexplicable Republican victory secured by petroleum lobbyist Brian Bilbray in California’s special election, Rove tore a few pages out of Chairman Mao’s little book and whipped up his own cultural revolution.

Stanchioned by a constitutional amendment banning flag burning, rows of banners snapped over Pennsylvania Avenue denouncing gay marriage as a threat commensurate with terrorism or bird flu. But those, like cancer, are not rendered by choice. If the idea of same-sex marriage makes you queasy, don’t have one. And the same goes for abortion — no one’s going to force you into it, unless, of course, you live in China or happen to be married to Charlie Sheen. Look, different cultures have different rules (pigeon feet are to the Iron Chef what chocolate chips are to Rachael Ray) — which is precisely why the immigration issue is so controversial. Are we willing to trade Christmas for Ramadan or the Fourth of July for Cinco de Mayo? House Republicans say no and are pressing to criminalize the 12 million illegal aliens already here. Although the logistical hurdles of rounding up so many offenders is somewhat mitigated by the fact that most of these immigrants live in the same East Los Angeles apartment, the question remains: how can the government forcibly deport millions upon millions of uncooperative interlopers when it couldn’t evacuate 300,000 willing inhabitants of New Orleans?

An abrupt segue, or better yet a turning point; that’s how President Bush characterized the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Though in some ways unique (the bombing, for example, derived from three similar plans by the CIA & Pentagon targeting his training camp in the Kurdish no-fly zone between 2002 and 2004 that were nixed by the administration), Mr. Bush failed to distinguish Zarqawi’s death from the cornucopia of other such Iraqi turning points. Remember, Iraq had already served up the capture of Saddam, the death of his sons, voters with stained fingers and finally, after much wrangling, a prime minister. Not a single one of these milestones, mind you, has done anything to alter conditions on the ground, where roadside bombs and sectarian violence push the death toll higher by the day. Since Zarqawi was quashed under 1000 lbs. of ordinance, a dozen car bombs have killed well over 100 people. And that’s just in Baghdad. Countrywide, terrorist activity continues unabated; the discovery of boxfuls of severed heads punctuated a week in which the brother of a provincial governor was assassinated and a senior member of the oil ministry was kidnapped. Unless you work for Halliburton, Exxon or a handful of private military contractors, this occupation gives little cause for celebration.

Infusing the Middle East with democracy was supposed to make the world a better place (and, tangentially, to line the coffers of the Carlyle Group) but so far the strategy, at least when measured in the metrics of the primary objective, has backfired. Despite multiple votes and a constitutional government, Iraq has been tipped into chaos by civil war. The Taliban are reclaiming large swaths of Afghanistan, while in Palestine, free elections have done little more than validate the terrorist group Hamas, which prefers cleaning out remnants of Yasser Arafat’s ruling Fatah party over such mundane chores as paving roads and generating electricity. With international sanctions squeezing the Palestinian treasury, unpaid workers have made habit of shooting up newly occupied government offices. After Fatah police caught a Hamas official crossing the Egyptian border with 639,000 euros sewn into his jacket, the militant group responded by killing a senior security officer. Reprisals then bounced back and forth peppered by the odd Israeli air strike (imagine a hockey referee getting in a couple of punches during a brawl). With the bodies piling up, One Fatah security officer declared, “Every time they touch one of ours in Gaza, we will get ten of theirs in the West Bank.” So is was no surprise that after a security commander was shot seven times, Fatah loyalists stormed parliament and burned down a Cabinet building. Standing before the flames, Hamas leader Farhat Assad lamented, “[This] is uglier that the practices of the Israeli occupation.”

In an attempt to avoid future conflagrations, Hamas has sworn off smuggling as a means to circumvent the Western boycott. With protesters chanting “We are hungry. We are hungry,” Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar returned from Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and several other Muslim countries with $20 million in his suitcase. One government spokesman noted that Zahar’s diplomatic status made the transfer “perfectly kosher.”

Americans can only conclude given recent events that democracy has twisted Palestine into another Northern Ireland. In both regions, freedom means blaming all your problems on so-called oppressors, while citizens kill their neighbors despite the fact that they possess the same skin color, speak the same gibberish, worship the same god, and display a similar flair with homemade bombs. For all our faults, Americans, at the least, have the courtesy to focus our hatred on people that are palpably different.

The other thing we do, apparently, is invade third world countries and kill gobs of innocent civilians. Viet Nam is the obvious example, but there are many others (e.g. Panama 1925 & 1989, Lebanon 1958 & 1982, Detroit 1967). And now Iraq. The Haditha massacre of 24 civilians (six of whom were children, aged 2 to 11) recalls the ghosts of My Lai. And while military investigators absolved participants in a similar spree in Ishaqi, the jury is still out on another incident in Hamandiyah where a bystander was dragged into the street, executed and then “dressed” with an AK-47 to make him look like and insurgent. As for Haditha, the real trouble started when a second wave of Marines converged on the scene and, forgetting the lessons of Abu Ghraib, began taking photographs. Reportedly, two of the assailants have confessed, which may explain the sacking of both Company commander Capt. Luke McConnell and Battalion commander Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani.

Both the Sunni vs. Shia violence in Iraq and the internecine skirmishes in Palestine could be solved by methods developed in, of all places, Kansas where Governor Kathleen Sebelius has convinced former Republican Party chairman Mark Parkinson to switch sides. This may be the second time Sebelius has used the Lt. governorship to lure Republicans away from the state’s sinking ship of Christian Fundamentalism , but before the Arabs sign up for classes, a few words of caution regarding this switching business: it doesn’t always work out so well. First there was that awful business with Ben “Nighthorse” Campbell and now county health officials in Michigan have misidentified a comatose survivor of a fatal car accident.

Laura VanRyn actually died in the crash but was mistaken for another passenger, Whitney Cerak. Cerak’s family thought they had buried their daughter, but was elated a month later when she began to regain consciousness and establish her true identity. VanRyn’s relatives are, obviously, crestfallen to discover it was Laura and not the badly injured Whitney that lay under ground. Apparently the girls’ physical similarities, along with the survivor’s extensive facial trauma, contributed to the mixup. VanRyn’s longtime boyfriend, Aryn Lineger: “I saw her hands, her feet, her complexion, and I can’t believe that wasn’t her. Once, when her parents left the room, I even tasted her pussy. Even to this day, it’s amazing to me that with all that time we spent together, that I just didn’t know.” While the Ceracks wait for their daughter to come home from the hospital, the VanRyns’ suffering continues. Before holding a funeral for the departed Laura, the coffin thought to contain Whitney was exhumed and trucked to their hometown of Caledonia. When morticians opened the lid, they were stunned to discover not the corpse of Laura VanRyn, but that of deposed (decomposed?) Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. The dreaded double switch. Last seen, the VanRyn clan was headed east towards a Milford Township horse farm, shovels in hand. Perhaps if they come up empty handed, they can at least dig a space between their two last names.