Opinion (Nikolas Gvosdev and Ray Takeyh): Mr. President, this war is over
In a final attempt to salvage his presidency and secure his legacy, President George W. Bush has announced yet another "strategy for victory" which calls for introducing 21,000 additional troops into the killing fields of Iraq. The point that the president and much of the Washington establishment refuses to concede is that the Iraq war is already over.
Saddam Hussein is dead and any remnants of his WMD program are utterly dismantled. But the United States has proven incapable of achieving any of its other lofty objectives.
For nearly four years, America has tried to reconstitute a kinder, gentler Iraq, ignoring the fact that Iraq has always been an artificial entity — an incongruous collection of sectarian groups cobbled together by the British empire and then sustained by Sunni terror.
The American invasion has irrevocably unraveled that arrangement, as the empowered Shiites, embittered Sunnis and secessionist Kurds have little desire to concede power to their sectarian foes.
Read the rest at the International Herald Tribune
Saddam Hussein is dead and any remnants of his WMD program are utterly dismantled. But the United States has proven incapable of achieving any of its other lofty objectives.
For nearly four years, America has tried to reconstitute a kinder, gentler Iraq, ignoring the fact that Iraq has always been an artificial entity — an incongruous collection of sectarian groups cobbled together by the British empire and then sustained by Sunni terror.
The American invasion has irrevocably unraveled that arrangement, as the empowered Shiites, embittered Sunnis and secessionist Kurds have little desire to concede power to their sectarian foes.
Read the rest at the International Herald Tribune
posted by iraqnam at 2:41 PM
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