2013 in Iraq

About 80 killed in suicide bombings this weekend... We sure fixed that place. Juan Cole:

Iraq got where it is because its elites and workers refused to compromise or make a grand bargain after the fall of the old regime in 2003. They gradually drove the Sunni Arab population into despair, into supporting or joining the guerrillas. Once a guerrilla insurgency is established and institutionalized, it typically goes on for a decade or more, and only about 20% are militarily defeated....

No one thinks it can happen to them. As an Algerian, UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, tried to warn the Iraqi elite in late spring of 2004 that you can fall into a civil war without meaning to, piecemeal. The elite was furious with him for comparing Iraq to divided and violent Algeria. By now Iraq has surely outstripped the violence that beset Algeria in the 1990s. Brahimi is now trying to warn the Syrians that yes, it can get worse.

http://www.juancole.com/2013/10/division-bloody-clashes.html

i watched this last night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vINM0CAysc8

Juan Cole:

Iraq got where it is because its elites and workers refused to compromise or make a grand bargain after the fall of the old regime in 2003.

^ 'no end in sight' makes the case for fault lying with the u.s. failed post-invasion occupation strategy:

According to No End in Sight, there were three especially grave mistakes made by L. Paul Bremer, the head of the CPA:

• Not providing enough troops to maintain order, which led to the absence of martial law after the country was conquered.
• Bremer's first official executive order implementing "De-Ba'athification" in the early stages of the occupation, as he considered members disloyal. Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'ath Party counted as its members a huge majority of Iraq's governmental employees, including educational officials and some teachers, as it was not possible to attain such positions unless one had membership. By order of the CPA, these skilled and often apolitical individuals were banned from holding any positions in Iraq's new government.
• Bremer's second official executive order disbanding all of Iraq's military entities, which went against the advice of the U.S. military and made 500,000 young men unemployed.

A smash success all around, then.

Great.

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-iraq-war-deaths-20131016,0,6128082.story

Violence Reverses Gains In Iraq.

Iraqi security officials say al Qaeda-linked fighters from the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, are moving aggressively to re-establish a base of operations in Anbar province, the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency during the U.S.-led war.

If the extremists succeed, they would undo one of the hardest-fought gains of U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies. By the time of the U.S. pullout at the end of 2011, the insurgency had been significantly weakened, in large part by a U.S. alliance with moderate Sunni tribesmen.

Insert here a dozen quotes from neocons, circa 2002, about the poverty of reality-based politics and vast superiority of just going out and imposing your vision of a democratic middle east onto Iraq, thereby creating history out of nothing but the richness of your fantasy life and superpotency of your will.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/car-bombs-kill-scores-in-baghdad-in-sign-of-crisis-in-iraq/2013/10/27/7ae9c376-3cb3-11e3-b7ba-503fb5822c3e_story.html?hpid=z1

So a failed US reconstruction plan, a corrupt government, and too many extremists all means that Iraq will just stay a mess for its people

iraq is going to remain a mess until the sunnis + shiites work shit out

You mean until one group exterminates the other?

historical sectarian conflicts have been concluded on some scale w/out the extermination of one of the involved parties, so i'm hopeful this will turn out similarly.

1,500 year old sectarian conflicts?

BELIEVE.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70230000/gif/_70230024_iraq_deaths_624_v5.gif

Already the worst year for civilian deaths since 2008.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED