[killer joe] “It surely was enevitable that the war would happen. How is this war different?”
Which war? The war between Iraq and the US or the civil war in Iraq?
Between the US and iraq … well that was quite avoidable.
Between the Iraqi factions … I’m not so sure.
Before the war I was warning about this danger. Then, I got to talking to Iraqis and realised that they were actually very intermarried and not nearly as sectarian as I had thought. Then the tit for tat bombings and killings started, and it turned out that the strongest social fabric can tear.
It’s a mess in Iraq like you would NOT believe.
In a nutshell:
The Iraqi patriotic types, some Shias and the Sunni tribes are fighting the Americans. The Shiite radicals and the Sunni radicals are fighting each other. The Sadrists, which are the biggest Shiite faction, would be fighting the Americans except for that they are too busy killing Badrist Shias and the Sunnis. The Badr Brigade which is the armed wing of SCIRI (Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, set up by Khomenei himself) has been working hand in hand with their sworn enemies, the Americans - at least, I suspect, until they either seize power or until Iran is attacked - whichever comes first. The Kurds occasionally lend their Peshmerga out to the US when an “Iraqi” face needs to be put on a particular operation, but in reality they are making a bid to separate themselves from the rest of Iraq. Turkey, a US ally, has a large (suppressed) Kurdish population and has all but threatened war if the Kurds secede. The criminals and criminal gangs are having an absolute riot in the meanwhile, and I suspect they have connections to both sides of the sectarian divide. In the northern cities Sunnis and Turkomen are battling Kurds for land and oil. Al Qaeda is an unknown sized force that gets redefined every time that CENTCOM needs to either make an argument that they are winning or that they need to stay to fight AQ.
The US is sitting on a ticking bomb where even its allies are its enemies, where the government it is supposed to be protecting is closer to Iran than the US, and where around 60% of the population thinks killing US troops is a good idea. The Iraqis that support the US presence do so only because they are scared the “other” Iraqis will take over if you leave.
Question.
What do you do now? *
[turgy22] “since farming was done in the South, while manufacturing was done in the North - Europe wanted finished products, not raw materials”
Hm. Sounds like the situation had reversed itself from the time when the War of Independence had raged. At that time Britain wanted cheap raw materials from the US in return for expensive finished goods – the mercantilist system, in other words.
*Other than write a science fiction novel on this story, which will get flamed for the improbable plot.