It has already begun, U.S. troops say
From Riverbend in Baghdad
I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever know just how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis left the country this bleak summer. I wonder how many of them will actually return. Where will they go? What will they do with themselves? Is it time to follow? Is it time to wash our hands of the country and try to find a stable life somewhere else?
Well…the so called civil war in Iraq bemuses many commentators primarily because the history of it isn’t there. So if there is this impetus — and no doubt there is — who is to gain from the it?
I think the strategy was there from Day One — and that was to Lebanize Iraq — the logic is a potent way to cripple the country and stifle any future role it could play as a broker in the Middle East. So rather than this civil war being an excuse for the US to stay or to leave — depending on your take — its political logic has a certain coherency from the US POV.
The country as a national entity is crippled and whiel the various stakeholder fight over oil right the main export is assured by didnt of backroom deals.