According to today’s edition of the Austrailian, Richard Armitage is claiming the Iraqi government may soon ask the United States to take its ball, and go play somewhere else:
In an exclusive interview with The Australian, former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage has given a gloomy assessment of the situation.
“The British used to make a big deal of walking around in their berets in the south,” he said. “Now they won’t even go to the latrines without their helmets. The south has got much rougher, it’s mainly Shia on Shia violence.”
Mr Armitage said much of the violence came from differences over how the Islamic religion should be interpreted.
And he said he believed the Iraqis would soon ask the US to leave their country.
Shi’a on Shi’a violence. Wonder why we never hear about that here in America? Oh, that’s right — it’s because we have media corporations that publish or broadcast all the news that’s the Bush Administration want you to know about Iraq, and not one teeny, tiny bit more than that.
Meanwhile, Armitage is just as optimistic about our prospects in Afghanistan . . .
Mr Armitage was equally gloomy about Afghanistan, especially in the south, where violence was worsening and Australia was deploying a new provincial reconstruction team. “It’ll be heavy lifting for them,” he said. “Five years after the overthrow of the Taliban, the ordinary people don’t see much change in their lives.”
Several factors were driving the renewed violence in Afghanistan including drugs which provided money for numerous warlords.
So, to reiterate, Iraq is one royally large SNAFU, and so is Afghanistan. The drug business there has returned with a vengeance, as have the influence of warlords and the Taliban.
Meanwhile, our best hope in Iraq is a “loose confederation” among Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds which hopefully won’t cause too much violent unrest in neighboring countries. As for the Iraqi people, the Sunnis will continue to be killed by Shi’a death squads, and the Shi’a will continue to battle each other over just how strictly Islamic law should be applied. I guess the Kurds will be okay so long as neither Turkey or Iran decides to invade Northern Iraq because of all the shit being stirred up within Kurdish minorities in those two neighboring states.
I predict another Bush speech touting all the “freedom” were spreading in the Middle East any day now. “Freedom”, of course, is the loosest sense of the word. Freedom from personal security, from meeting even basic living standards, from any hope for the protection of human rights, and from peace in our time.
Oh to be young and free in Iraq!