Iraq

I just read one of the best, most concise, explanations for what's going on in Iraq. It's one of those things that would have taken me ten paragraphs to explain without ever really getting to the point as clearly as Peter Galbraith does here. Galbraith was ambassodor to Croatia and helped end the civil war in Yugoslavia Here's a excerpt from Raw Story in an article about claims that Bush was unaware their were different sects of Islam:

Galbraith argues that because the new Iraq was never a voluntary creation of its people--but rather held together by force--America’s ongoing attempt to preserve a unified nation is guaranteed to fail, especially since it’s divided into three different entities.

“You can’t have a national unity government when there is no nation, no unity, and no government,” said Galbraith. “Rather than trying to preserve or hold together a unified Iraq, the U.S. must accept the reality of Iraq’s breakup and work with the Shiites, Kurds, and Sunni Arabs to strengthen the already semi-independent regions.”

What Gailbraith is refering to is the Sykes-Picot Agreement, wherein the French and British carved up the Middle East according to their interests and relative power. The British wanted oil, the French wanted protection for the Maronite Christians in Lebanon and Syria. The map that came from this agreement had nothing to do with the pre-existing socio-political lines that are exploding today. Iraq was convenient because it brought together the northern Kirkuk oil fields with the southern Basra oil fields and neatly tied them together with two great rivers. In fact, nobody in the area considered themselves "Iraqi" before then. They were Arabs and Kurds (and a few other groups) of Sunni or Shi'ite faith living in Mesopotamia.


Before the war started, Stratfor argued the best post-war plan would be to divy Iraq up into seperate parts and hand them over to allies. Kurdistan would be an independent nation, much of the "Sunni Triangle" would be given to Jordan, and the Shi'ite south would be given to Kuwait. While plausible in theory, it's as realistic as Paul Halsall's statement that it would much better to just restore the Ottoman Empire. Informed people were pointing out these very issues before war even broke out. I think the dreamy nature of these informed suggestions shows just how deep a problem they are.

Even Brent Scowcroft and George HW Bush said these things as a defense to why they didn't storm Baghdad in 1991.

Luckily I am no longer a newspaper pundit, so I don't have to offer solutions. At this point, I'm not even criticizing. We are where we are. It's time for someone to come up with a creative solution to the problem for 2008. I've given up on Bush thinking his way out of this one.

What glacier? Just stay the course...


Tags: Treyopia, China, Iraq, War, CurrentEvents, Peter, Galbraith, Bush, Policy, sect, Religion, Sykes-Picot, history