Iraq: Not a Country, Not a Government

As serial explosions are now pretty routine in the capital city of Baghdad, as a parliament that cannot even figure out how to meet as a legislature much less govern a deeply divided nation struggles to find meaning, and as Iran pushes her Shiite agenda deep into the new governing Shiite majority in Iraq, you really have to ask yourself what the trillion or so dollars we spent on that war actually accomplished. The world looked to the United States for its “free market” model, but the crash of 2008 tarnished that perception, maybe forever; oddly, it is the “Communist-capitalist” model of China that has all eyes turned towards this new paradigm. And the world focused on how Iraq would be better off with an American-imposed constitution and parliamentary democracy. It clearly isn’t. Our intentions, good or bad, are now irrelevant; we are left with the aftermath of our policies, perhaps a foreshadowing of the “failures yet to come” in ungovernable Afghanistan.

It took well over half a year from the elections in March to get a seated government in the new Iraq: “[Many Iraqis] recalled the exhilaration they’d felt taking their families to vote on March 7, ignoring threats of violence at the polls, and then the disillusionment of watching helplessly as politicians spent eight months deciding the elections behind closed doors. The standoff bred cynicism and diminished faith in a government that seemed unable to provide electricity and other services, nor to stop the circulation of deadly bombs into their neighborhoods.” New York Times, November 11^th. Who was the winner? Did the incumbent survive? It was all done behind closed doors. “In Sunni areas, many people accused [incumbent] Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of stealing the election from his rival, Ayad Allawi.” Times.

“Even before members of the Iraqiya bloc, which won the most seats in the election, walked out of the new Parliament’s first session because of a failure to meet its demands, voters were as irreconcilable as the elected officials many said left them without faith.” Times. There are many small factions within the Iraqi body politic, but the majority are clearly the Shiites, the Sunnis appear disenfranchised, and the northern Kurds simply want out… after they get their claimed oil fields back.

What can we expect? Peaceful resolution of the factional disagreements evolving over time? Don’t bet on it. The government is clearly tilting toward the Shiites, Iran is fomenting as much discontent as possible, and many Sunnis are beginning to believe that a sustained civil war is their only alternative. Even al Qaeda is back recruiting and interfering on the side of the Sunnis. Oooops! There goes another neighborhood bomb… Exactly what did we accomplish? Is this what Afghanistan will look like when we are gone? Or worse? Corrupt Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the Washington Post (October 14^th) that his forces were ready on their own, that he objected to many of the tactics employed by NATO forces (like night raids, which, though effective at capturing insurgents, are immensely unpopular locally because of the concomitant civilian casualties) and that it was time for the U.S. to begin withdrawing: “The time has come to reduce military operations…The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan . . . to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life.” Why don’t we just take him up on his suggestion?!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I sure would like to have someone who believes in these wars tell me exactly what we accomplished and what was in it for the U.S.