The nation-state of Iraq was never a particularly good idea, but it plodded along for most of the 20th-Century with a series of kings and dictators at the helm. President George W. Bush killed that Iraq and it cannot be saved no matter what Michael Gerson has to say about it. No, we will not stop pointing the finger of blame at Bush and his bloodthirsty foreign policy team. We will never stop blasting them for the carnage they have wrought. And the effort to shift the blame to Obama or the Democrats or progressives for this disaster will be met, consistently, with a fist to the mouth.
This doesn’t mean that there isn’t work to be done. Our erstwhile allies on the Arabian peninsula are encouraging a radical Sunni uprising in Iraq, as well as in Syria. It’s part of a regional sectarian holy war, and we have no interest in furthering the violence on either side. Ironically, Bush’s team, by empowering Iran, have pushed our Sunni allies to go all-in with al-Qaeda types, as these are the only folks willing to lay down their lives to fight Shiites.
This should make clear just how thoroughly Dick and George bungled the so-called War on Terror. We have no allies left in the Middle East. There is no one who we want to win and no one whom it makes sense to support.
All efforts should be focused on creating a negotiated settlement and new boundaries rather than preserving Syria and Iraq as coherent nation-states. They will never be coherent nation-states again.
If we were to send troops back into Iraq. We would be treated as invaders. So many have lost family members caused by the Bush Boys debacle. The will try to seek revenge for the USA never prosecuted all those involved in the numerous war crimes.
Sorry folks but when President Obama decided to let these folks go. The decision was made right then that the USA stays out of Iraq by the Iraqi people.
Can you actually blame the Iraqis for not wanting us there? Think about it look what they Bush Administration did to these peoples homes, life’s. Would you welcome back people that ruined your family and the whole country?
The trouble is that now comes a very brutal time when people pulverize each other until either one side is obliterate or they finally exhaust themselves into a grudging peace. History is replete with similar examples, including at many times within Europe and also between Christians and Muslims.
In the west, we no longer believe in wars of annihilation but they used to be the norm. We did it to our native population. Germanic tribes pushed out the Celts. Vikings raped, looted and plundered. When the Christians came into Jerusalem, they killed men, women and children, Muslim and otherwise. Today, many Israelis wish they could do it to the Palestinians and, under cover of war at various times, they have. Not full blown genocide but certainly expulsion. Were the world not looking on, the Palestinians would have been marched into Jordan long ago and then Israel would have gone after Jordan too.
The age of empire has receded. I don’t see it returning in a full blown way because it’s obviously destructive in the age of capital. Japan will never return to that way of thinking. Europe won’t return to it. The Asian economic giants won’t return. But, for some length of time, we’re going to watch a version of empire play out across the tribal regions of the middle east.
Look, the boundary lines drawn after WWI never made any sense.
And it took either brutal Royal Families or Dictators to hold some semblance of stability in their countries.
“Bush’s Follies,” let that genii out of the bottle, and, you’re right BooMan, it’ll never go back in.
This is rapidly brewing into a region-wide religious Civil War.
And, because “we” started it, we do have some obligations to try to separate the groups, let them negotiate their own boundary lines, and then let them keep the peace themselves.
Of course, that won’t work either, because large sections of each country don’t have a lot of oil, which is where the REAL money is.
We need to help figure out how to make sure that the areas that don’t have it, aren’t left to be some sort of desert.
What that is, I will leave to greater minds than mine – which means a lot of people. 😉
I’m of two minds on this post. First:
This. A thousand times this. This is why many of us supported Howard Dean – he was the only one willing to meet the GOP with a fist to their mouth. It’s why some of us like Alan Grayson (even though he’ll never be more that a Rep from Central Florida). I would like to see more Pugilistic Progressives instead of the passive and pusillanimous varieties that seem to be more common.
Second:
My other thought on this is that I believe it would be worth asking various the sides if they are even interested in a negotiated settlement. Some of these grievances have been ongoing for generations – I don’t know if words on a piece of paper will settle that. I don’t know that “we” can create anything, or for that matter if we should even try. We are certainly responsible for removing the structure that kept the peace, so I can see financial culpability and us paying restitution in some form, but I am skeptical of our ability or standing to impose or even strongly suggest a negotiated settlement upon anyone.
Skeptical, but not necessarily opposed.
Regarding your second paragraph, Booman is engaging in imperialist thoughts. “We” have no business telling “them” what government or borders they should have like we are Big Brother or something telling the be-knighted lesser breeds what to do.
Headline on some other site: “Who Lost Iraq?”
Answer: Winston Churchill.
Fromkin, David: A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East [New York: Avon, 1989]
And Lebanon? Jordan? Kuwait? Palestinian territories and Israel, even? It’s a pretty complicated neighborhood.
At various times throughout history, including today, the same could be said, can be said, for most nation-states. Looking at the current world map, what existing nation-states aren’t the product of those with the superior weaponry, almost always after bloody conflicts, drawing the boundaries?
Ethnically, culturally, historical, the people of Iraq share more than do the peoples of the US. One difference, to the dismay of many in the US who never stop longing to change it, is no state religion. And a head of state who was supposed to leave office when voted out or removed by Congress for high crimes and misdemeanors. Yet, three were still removed by guns.
The world has yet to devise a legal and peaceful method for peoples within geographical boundaries to choose integration or separation, a do-over. There are RWNJ in various US state, Colorado for one, that want to split from their state and some from the nation. Are the natives of the Hawaiian Islands that seek sovereignty less legitimate than the Kurds in Iraq? As a territory of the US, Hawaii isn’t much older than Iraq and as a US State it’s much younger.
There are no easy answers for Iraq and its inhabitants. But the answers must be theirs and their alone. Otherwise, in the future, after much strife and bloodshed, someone will say, “the nation-state of X was never a good idea.”
I actually think that it is up to the residents of the geography to determine whether a secular, multi-ethnic, non-sectarian common government is still possible.
The Iraqis who answer polls seem to be optimistic.
Is Iraq Actually Falling Apart?
There is a political power play going on with the Sunni Bedouin tribesmen who were a part of Petraeus’s Sunni Awakening. There is a Saudi/Qatari/UAE Salafist militia that is for now having the Bedouins provide the mass to take places like Mosul.
I’m not sure that sectarian politics is attractive to the people in the area anymore.
But they are consistent on one thing: US and Iran, butt out. Even the Shia. That sentiment will likely soon extend to the Gulf countries backing ISIS and other Wahabist and Salafist movements.
Too bad the administration has been stampeded into putting his name on a policy. It’s time to stop pretending the John McCain is President.
The nation-state of Iraq makes as much sense politically as the state of California. Ninety-four years of national identity through all sorts of institutions does make a difference for a lot of Iraqis.
Now would be a good time to clean the administration of neo-cons.
That would be one way to seriously shrink the federal government. The financial meltdown was an opportunity to clean out all the neo-liberals. Nah — those two house-cleanings could result in peace and prosperity and that’s not in the interests of the top 10%.
Since I find it necessary for Gerson and the horrible people he worked with to account for the fact that they lied to get us into war and they were wrong about every single important thing they asserted would happen in a post-invasion Iraq, he asserts that I am not a “serious foreign policy thinker.” Well, fuck him, then. Everything he demands can and should be ignored. I see no evidence he’s learned a thing.
We desperately need a public truth and reconciliation commission on Iraq and our other foreign misadventures, but particularly Iraq. Until then, keeping warmongers out of the Oval Office is a must.
So get the Hell out! And DON’T send in “military advisers”. Barack Obama is too young to remember what that leads to, but I’m not!
Northern part of Iraq, the Kurds are in the process of establishing an independent state. The Peshmerga fighters have wrestled Kirkuk loose from the nation state Iraq and are trying to conquer Mosul.
○ Kurdistan PM Barzani: Crisis between Erbil and Baghdad is big and leads to Iraq’s collapse
Good for them!
Part of my diary …
○ Opinion: The Post-Assad Opportunity Yousef Al-Dayni
The idea of large countries with multiple ehtnicities/religions/sects all packed together is going to be considered a phenomenon that historians will point to and say “this setup was just not feasible for any length of time”.
All empires shrink, and the states that they set up in order to control people and resources also shrink, often after the empire has packed up and gone home.
Iraq and a lot of the middle eastern countries were literally created on maps by Europeans a century ago. The sooner we let go of the idea that countries should never redefine themselves, the sooner we can get on with it.
My personal belief is that the United States does have a very real role in making sure that any division of Iraq is as peaceful as possible. When countries split, all sorts of bad things happen if there isn’t a requisite force there to stop it. Look at Pakistan/India when they split.
Yes, Republican trashbags broke Iraq, but they did it as the “Government of the United States”, and we do owe the Iraqi people a whole hell of a lot for what our government did in our name.
I think the best bet at this point is to try to get the UN to step in and let Iraqis have a referendum about splitting into separate countries in general, with specifics to be hashed out afterwards. The UN should also have peacekeeping forces in Iraq for the eventual split of the country. Otherwise, the UN is totally fucking useless.
When was that not the case?
Was there a time when we really wanted the corrupt dirtbags and their lunatic religious partners in Riyadh — you know, our “allies” — to win anything?
In the sense of shared beliefs, we’ve never had allies over there. Britain and France are allies. Canada is an ally. Australia and Japan are allies.
Saudi Arabia? Not an ally. They’re a state with which we’ve had a horrible, dangerous codependent relationship for too long. The one bright spot in Bush’s idiocy is that this is now being exposed.
They’re not all-in with the al-Qaeda-types, Boo. They are the al-Qaeda-types.
There’s no good option here. Best we can hope for is that the Iranians help push the really scary crazies back and perhaps help to convey to the buffoons in Baghdad that Maliki is going to get them all killed.