Increasing Iraq Violence: U.S. Withdrawal to Blame?
What are we to make of the increase in violent deaths in Iraq during June and July? Is it a sign of a long-term upsurge in violence since the U.S. troop withdrawal? Who are the culprits? These are all pertinent questions to ask.
It should be noted that violence in Iraq often follows cyclical patterns. Insurgent groups normally step up their operations as summer begins, and also around the times of religious festivals, when pilgrims — frequently traveling on foot — are exposed to attacks. In June, there were waves of bomb attacks targeting Shi’a pilgrims who were commemorating the death of Moussa al-Kadhim, who was the great-grandson of Muhammad. One should be careful in extrapolating from short-term trends to warn of growing sectarian tensions and a return to civil war in the near future.
Today, the insurgent groups responsible for attacks on civilians and a large number of attacks on government officials are entirely Sunni, since the Shi’a militant groups like the Kataib Hizbullah have disbanded following the pullout of U.S. forces.
The two main organizations are al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which is now virtually an entirely native force, and the Ba’athist Naqshibandia. The latter is led by Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri, who is still at large and most recently appeared in April in a video denouncing the Assad regime and complaining of an Iranian-American-Israeli conspiracy taking over Iraq.
At present, there is no real evidence to suggest that either group is gaining new recruits from Sunni Arabs on the basis of frustration with problems in the political process. If such an assertion were true, insurgents carrying out the attacks would surely make their specific grievances clear (e.g., perhaps demanding from Nouri al-Maliki’s government in Baghdad an amnesty for Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi).
However, there are two ways in which one can link the current state of Iraqi politics with violence. First, as analyst Joel Wing of Musings on Iraq suggested to me in a discussion on this topic, the political impasse can induce frustration in local Sunni Arab populations such that the insurgents have an easier environment in which to conduct operations.
Hence, said locals might refuse to disclose the whereabouts of insurgents to the security forces, presumably due to a “serves them right” attitude regarding the government and security forces. In turn, the tendency towards heavy-handedness on the part of the Iraqi army and police — which still suffer from major deficiencies in intelligence gathering on militant activities — could only exacerbate such a problem.
No, Islam and culture are the problem. The Global Jihad will have to be defeated before there is any hope for a solution. Check back in fifty years.
‘Check back in fifty years’
I thought it took longer than that for the dangers of radiation exposure to subside ?
More failed CFR/Washington policy,(unless this was their plan all along as we see reprobate Washington team up with the Islamic terrorists against Syria’s Assad) more lives wasted in another war of waste that has made the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about filthy rich.
No silly. The Iraqis are to blame.
In any case, as long as they don’t threaten us or their neighbors and the oil keeps flowing, let the savages kill each other to their hearts’ content.
Same for Syria (though I hope Assad wins).
Unfortunately, the only thing Middle Eastern countries like Iraq understand is a dictatorship. Whether it’s a general, monarch, a secular dictator, or some psychotic mullah in a turban, no Muslim Middle Eastern country will survive as a democracy. Just won’t happen. The last best hope for that was Lebanon, and even that has been taken over by Hezbollah. Even Pakistan is a mess, with the Taliban and other religious tribal groups running huge sections of the country, weakening the nation’s central civilian government (and let’s not forget that Pakistan was for many years run by ex-military men, too).
No, the best that we can hope for are monarchs or dictators that are pro-western, like the King in Jordan or the Sultan in Oman. You will never have democracy in a part of the world that has never had it, never really wanted it, and has never tried to maintain it. Iraq will either collapse into three separate mini-nations (sunni, shia, and Kurd), or another Saddam-like dictator will come along and take over the whole nation. Either way, it will not end well. We were foolish to even try bringing democracy there. Both Bush and Obama (who is learning real fast that Afghanistan is about to be yet another American failure in the Muslim world) had some wierd Wilsonian idea that we could force democracy on people who didn’t want it. As usual, they were wrong. And now we’re about to pay the price for that.
I just hope future American presidents don’t make this same mistake. We need to stop trying to win “hearts and minds” in this part of the world and simply tell them that if they don’t leave us alone, we will destroy them. We did the same thing over 200 years ago with the Islamic Barbary Pirates, and nothing has changed since then. It’s also the same lesson Lord Roberts taught the Afghan tribesmen over 100 years ago and it still holds true today. You will never control those countries. The best you can hope for is to get on the good side of the tyrant in charge at the moment and hope you can work with him. Sad, but true, and the events in places like Iraq and now Egypt only confirm that opinion. Mubarak was a pro-western friend and we totally threw him under the bus. Does Obama and Clinton like what replaced him? Same thing is going to happen in Iraq. And we will never go back into that country. Americans have no stomach for fighting a third Gulf War in or around Iraq. Nor should we.
Let’s face it…..we Americans as infidel foreigners are only welcome in this Iraqi/Afghani/Pakistani/Muslim cauldron as long as the US Dollar Cash Spigot is kept open. Now that we’ve started to pull away from that area after getting rid of Saddam, [...you're welcome, World....] the traditional way of solving all disputes in that arena is becoming more frequent.
As the Dollar cash flow decreases, the intra- and inter- Muslim violence against outsiders of any ethnic or religious group is certain to increase. Sort of an inverse relationship.
As an afterthought, isn’t it interesting that the French who were the other half of that seminal Sykes-Picot Agreement are standing by in the wings so coyly? At least the British despite their greatly reduced circumstances have a sizable [proportionally] contingent in the area still.
This American thinks that it’s not America’s moral obligation to go off to the nether parts of Asia to fight others’ wars. We accomplish nothing against the longer history of Asia’s unending strife.
If it were practicable, I’d say bring home all of our young troops today. The traditional violence and butchery will erupt anyway…..no matter how long we stay. Get out immediately.
George Bush is to blame. Always.
The only thing I blame Bush for is not having the guts to fight the Iraq war like we wanted to win it. He lost all his nerve after the MSM blamed him for the slow response to the tsunami in Indonesia, even though it was only a matter of hours and we did more than any other nation in terms of humanitarian aid. Immediately on its heels came Katrina, for which we all know he was personally responsible because the government can control the weather, and if the government can’t, American CO2 does. After those twin weather-related events, Bush went into a secure undisclosed location and was hardly a force for the rest of his term.
The problem with Iraq is Iraqis. They had a chance to have a chance, and could not turn their back on the things like corruption and state building.
The people they follow and/or elect are the same as the ones run-off. It is how business is done their: fee for service in its most extreme form.
I would like to see the pack of them emulate the Kilkenny cats:
There once were two cats of Kilkenny
Each thought there was one cat too many
So they fought and they fit
And they scratched and they bit
‘Til (excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails)
Instead of two cats there weren’t any!