From the March 2003 invasion through to the here and now, the story line for the Iraq war has been one of stops and starts, peaks and valleys, and upheavals and calms.
By this reckoning we are now in an extended calm. The Surge has substantially met its military goals, U.S. and civilian deaths are way down, Bush and Al-Maliki have signed a deal that gives new meaning to back scratching, and refugees are cautiously making their way back to their now walled neighborhoods – if they still exist.
But this is a damning calm – and likely a calm before yet another storm.
This is because that window of opportunity the Surge was supposed to provide for the Baghdad government to reconcile and consolidate has pretty much closed as regional warlords, armed and abetted by a feckless U.S. that is flying without a wing, prayer or strategy, are quickly consolidating their power.
Is a warlord state preferable to no state at all?
The cynical answer is “of course.” This is because both Washington and Baghdad have gotten what they want in the form of that business deal: The corrupt weakling Al-Maliki gets long-term coup insurance in the form of U.S. troops stationed at permanent bases and the mighty U.S. gets first dibs at Iraq’s vast untapped oil riches.
A headline in the Los Angeles Times captures the current edition of the Iraq conundrum well:
Writes Times reporter Ned Parker:
“The U.S. troop buildup in Iraq was meant to freeze the country’s civil war so political leaders could rebuild their fractured nation. Ten months later, the country’s bloodshed has dropped, but the military strategy has failed to reverse Iraq’s disintegration into areas dominated by militias, tribes and parties, with a weak central government struggling to assert its influence.
“In the south, Shiite Muslim militias are at war over the lucrative oil resources in the Basra region. To the west, in Anbar province, Sunni Arab tribes that once fought U.S. forces now help police the streets and control the highways to Jordan and Syria. In the north, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens are locked in a battle for the regions around Kirkuk and Mosul. In Baghdad, blast walls partition neighborhoods policed by Sunni paramilitary groups and Shiite militias.”
One of life’s lessons is learning to settle for less.
But even for those of us who never believed that the Bush administration’s grandiose vision of Iraq being a beacon of democracy could succeed, settling for a failed state is a bitter pill.
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