The Shame of Iraq

The AP finally figured out that the President has been flip-flopping on why we went to war in Iraq since the day they came up empty on finding WMD. File this report in the "shit we knew already, but welcome to the party" cabinet:

President Bush keeps revising his explanation for why the U.S. is in Iraq, moving from narrow military objectives at first to history-of-civilization stakes now.

Initially, the rationale was specific: to stop Saddam Hussein from using what Bush claimed were the Iraqi leader's weapons of mass destruction or from selling them to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.

But 3 1/2 years later, with no weapons found, still no end in sight and the war a liability for nearly all Republicans on the ballot Nov. 7, the justification has become far broader and now includes the expansive "struggle between good and evil."

Republicans seized on North Korea's reported nuclear test last week as further evidence that the need for strong U.S. leadership extends beyond Iraq.

Bush's changing rhetoric reflects increasing administration efforts to tie the war, increasingly unpopular at home, with the global fight against terrorism, still the president's strongest suit politically.

Oh course, nobody still thinks that anymore. If you look at the three members of the Axis of Evil named in 2002, North Korea has definitively tested a nuclear weapon (albeit a small one), Iran is moving towards uranium enrichment and a likely nuclear program, and Iraq is in a brutal civil war with American casualties rising markedly. The foreign policy disaster perpetrated by this Administration is unquestioned, and the American public has their eyes wide open on this issue. On Iraq, so do Senators like Chuck Hagel and John Warner and, let us not forget, pretty much the entire Democratic Senatorial Caucus, half of which voted against this war authorization in the first place. The course needs to be changed, and no amount of linkage between Iraq and the war on terror diverts that fundamental need.

The Shiites agree with the British commander in wanting them out of the country:

BASRA, Iraq - Many Shiites in this southern port city say they want British troops to leave, though the region is still bloodied by a persistent grind of killings, including Sunni insurgent bombings and Shiite-on-Shiite slayings amid a competition for political control.

Several prominent Basra leaders on Friday agreed with an assessment by Britain's army chief that the British presence only worsens the violence and the soldiers should withdraw soon. Gen. Richard Dannatt backpedaled Friday from the comments he made in an interview a day earlier, saying he meant troops should leave within years, but the statements caused a political storm in Britain.

In Basra, Shiites insist the British presence only provides a target for attackers seeking to end the "occupation" — and some said the troops are doing nothing to rein in party-backed Shiite militias that have risen to prominence.

Nobody's doing anything to rein in the militias, that's the entire problem. They are allowed to freely roam the streets, going house to house to engage in forced removal and ethnic cleansing. And the Iraqi government is kicking the can down the road:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in an interview with USA TODAY that his government will not force militias to disarm until later this year or early next year, despite escalating violence in Baghdad fueled by death squads and religious warfare [...]

Al-Maliki said he has rejected U.S. plans to launch large-scale operations into Sadr City, a Baghdad slum and a stronghold of the Mahdi Army, a powerful militia loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Al-Sadr's political organization controls several Cabinet positions and 30 seats in the parliament.

"We have told the Americans that we don't mind targeting a Mahdi Army cell inside Sadr City," al-Maliki said. "But the way the multinational forces are thinking of confronting this issue will destroy an entire neighborhood. Of course it was rejected."

There "seems like a disconnect" between U.S. and Iraqi strategies, said Steven Cook, a Middle East analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Seems? Yeah, there's a disconnect when the source of the main violence in the country is allowed to freely arm themselves and attack whoever they wish. This is what you get when elections produce a government beholden to the very militias who are the primary cause of the violence. Without the ability to incur into these regions, the US ends up just flying more and more air sorties (those have gone way up, by the way), and you can't stop sectarian violence from 10,000 feet.

Which is probably why the White House wants to give democracy its marching papers:

Matthews: David, do you believe the President is looking for an out from his doctrinaire policy of staying the course?

Brooks: Not really, no I don't. I think they're looking at policy options. One of those options is trying to replace the current government which seems to be doing nothing. The second option is some sort of federation which-Joe Biden has suggested as separating Iraq. A third option and by far the least likely is going in with more troops, So there's all different three options...We have much less control over Iraq than we did two or three years ago...

"Purple fingers be damned, we've got an election of our own to win," seems to be the standard here.

Somebody (maybe, god forbid, Ben Affleck) made a very important point on Bill Maher's show this weekend. We will never be forgiven for stirring up this hornet's nest in Iraq. We entered a country under a dictator, not unlike many countries around the world under a dictator that we didn't enter and continue to ignore, and we set off a tinderbox of sectarian violence that will continue for the rest of our lives, in all likelihood. We made no attempt to restore order at the outset and indeed invited chaos ("Stuff happens.") We have caused the deaths of at least half a million Iraq people (and yes, that's a legitimate number from the Lancet study. More here and here), and as the original invaders we ARE ultimately the cause, at the very least indirectly. And we will always have to answer for it throughout the Middle East for the remainder of this century. We've done a horrible thing that we have little chance of being able to reverse, and all we can do now is cut our losses rather than sinking more lives and treasure into this worthless escapade.