2005 Year in Review

The Iraqi situation

That's right. Our government, which used to estimate that there were just 5,000 "dead-enders", now is faced by over 200,000 insurgents.

President Bush, meanwhile, has decided to face the situation by, well, not facing it. The Nelson Report says:

There is rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear “bad news.”

The President and his advisors continually create false hope by saying that the insurgency is worse because the "dead-enders" are gearing up for the election. Earlier it was Saddam's capture that was supposed to help or the formal turn over of the government to the interim Iraqi government.

Now, they're saying that things are going to get worse in Iraq after the election. It is difficult not to think that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and is much worse than it was 20 months ago.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes this week in a column which eerily echoes the view of one of our readers earlier this year who said that Iraq needs to have a civil war:

Each day we get closer to the Iraqi elections, more voices are suggesting that they be postponed. This is a tough call, but I hope the elections go ahead as scheduled on Jan. 30. We have to have a proper election in Iraq so we can have a proper civil war there.

Juan Cole, a highly respected expert on Arab issues, disagrees with this column's promotion of three Iraqi sectors. I don't disagree with any of his points:

It is because it would cause a great deal of trouble to us all, not least Iraqis. Iraq is not divided neatly into three ethnic enclaves. It is all mixed up. There are a million Kurds in Baghdad, a million Sunnis in the Shiite deep south, and lots of mixed provinces (Ta'mim, Ninevah, Diyalah, Babil, Baghdad, etc.). There is a lot of intermarriage among various Iraqi groups. Look at President Ghazi Yawir. He is from the Sunni Arab branch of the Shamar tribe. But some Shamar are Shiites. One of his wives is Nasrin Barwari, a Kurdish cabinet minister. What would partition do to the Yawirs?

Then, how do you split up the resources? If the Sunni Arabs don't get Kirkuk, then they will be poorer than Jordan. Don't you think they will fight for it? The Kurds would fight to the last man for the oil-rich city of Kirkuk if it was a matter of determining in which country it ended up.

by John Legler, Guest Columnist
January 7, 2005