One problem with the Bush’s approach towards Iraq from the start is that he has ignored the reality of the situation, beginning with buying the claims we’d be greeated with flowers as liberators. There are multiple reports around both the mainstream media and blogosphere about the actual situation in Iraq.
The New York Times sums up the problem with the title, It Has Unraveled So Quickly. It is well worth reading the full account, but you can get the feel with the opening paragraph:
A PAINFUL measure of just how much Iraq has changed in the four years since I started coming here is contained in my cellphone. Many numbers in the address book are for Iraqis who have either fled the country or been killed. One of the first Sunni politicians: gunned down. A Shiite baker: missing. A Sunni family: moved to Syria.
One reason success will be so difficult to achieve is that the moderates are the ones who are leaving:
The moderates are mostly gone. My phone includes at least a dozen entries for middle-class families who have given up and moved away. They were supposed to build democracy here. Instead they work odd jobs in Syria and Jordan. Even the moderate political leaders have left. I have three numbers for Adnan Pachachi, the distinguished Iraqi statesman; none have Iraqi country codes.
For another view of conditions in Iraq, listen to this week’s This American Life. It’s a story about “an American reporter in Iraq decides to rent a house in a residential neighborhood of Baghdad, rather than in live in a hotel, where he could become an easy target for insurgents.” While not the main focus of the story, there are indications of how bad the problem is, including off the record admissions from American officials that the condition is far worse than they are officially admitting.
The Guardian has also had recent reports on the dangers of living in Baghdad, the most recent entitled “If they pay we will them anyways”–the Kidnappers Story.
This is one headline which gives slight hope that the surge could be successful in reducing the violence from the Times of London. They report that Death Squad Chieftains Flee to Beat Baghdad surge. Unfortunately it appears that this is only a temporary retreat which will not help bring peace in the long run. Failure to look at the long run has been Bush’s problem from the start. I suspect that his current strategy is to drag things out so that the next President will be forced to devise a long term plan, and take the blame for the problems which will inevitably occur since every possible solution to the mess he started carries serious problems.
Andrew Sullivan posted a video “showing U.S soldiers watching as their Iraqi Army colleagues – Shia – brutally beat Sunni civilians to near-death, as U.S. soldiers hoop and holler in support. It shows what this president is now risking: that the U.S. will become a party to one side in a sectarian civil war. It is happening already. It must be stopped. However grim things are in Iraq, this president’s policy could make things far, far worse.” Needless to say, posting the truth upsets the authoritarian right which prefers suppression of news to criticism of their leader. Hot Air blasts Sullivan for his smearing US troops. Mickey Kaus also weighs in, with a response from Sullivan here. Glenn Greenwald concludes “best case scenario in Iraq — what we achieve in the extremely unlikely circumstance that we accomplish our current, stated goals — is to strengthen a government dominated by Shiite death squads and/or Iran.”
