The news on Iraq is not good

[TayTay]

I have been reading various accounts on both wars and the news is decidedly not good. Iraq is, to use Thomas Ricks phrase, unraveling. The deals that General Petraeus made with the Sunnis are falling apart. This is mostly because Maliki, the next Saddam, hated those deals to begin with and never planned on honoring them. The US payment system was supposed to pass to the Iraqis. They are not making the payments to the Sunnis.

It looks like Iraq's Civil War should return with a vengeance over the next few months. Watch the number of bombings and deaths creeping upward this summer. This is not good.

Follow the war news on Iraq at http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/14/iraq_the_unraveling_iv_what_he_said">Foreign Policy Magazine. They have an excellent group of writers and superior commentators to these stories. (The commentary really is quite good on threads there and well worth your time.)

I am pretty much away doing domestic errands the next few days. In my spare time, I think I am going to rewatch the Iraq hearings from last March that talked about Iraq After the Surge. I think the negatives that were foretold are coming true. Sad, but true

http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2008/hrg080402p.html
http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2008/hrg080402a.html

I think the prospect of Sen. Kerry holding hearings on Afghanistan in a few weeks should be very interesting. I also wonder if he will hold hearings on Iraq. Those of us who favor withdrawal should be following what is going on there. We are seeing the fruition of the biggest foreign policy mistake in US history come to pass. It is going to be an ugly story and the US is nowhere near being done in that country.

[YvonneCa]

1. The ramifications from that bad decision...

...will go on for a very long time...both in Iraq and for our foreign policy future. Thanks for the links.

[karynnj]

2. It bothers me that we really haven't pushed the political

resolution to the degree we should have. When Kerry ran, he spoke of immediately working to set up a regional and in 2006 the Senate by voice vote passed a resolution for that - but, it has not happened. Instead, the timeline for leaving was left nearly as Bush had it.

The really nasty thing is that the Republicans will claim the surge (never designed to be permanent - because we did not even have the ability to make it permanent) was working - and Obama changed the plan.

I know Biden was there recently. He never really signed on to Kerry's ideas on pressuring them to make the hard decisions. Kerry, in fact, stressed in his speech when he backed Biden's amendment after Biden made changes Kerry had called for for a year, spoke of the fact that a lever of a deadline was needed. The fact is that Obama chose a longer deadline when running - and pushed that out as President.

[wisteria]

3. Iraq is in a predictable but very sad state. The Iraqi's must want to make it work and it is

apparent right now, that the mistrust between the Sunni's and and Shities is as prominant as ever. I don't blame the Sunni's for most of what is going on- it is the Shite lead government that is not honoring promises made. It is like you said. I frankly, do not know what we can do now to keep the piece. I suppose negotiations may help and perhaps witholding funds, but ultimately it is as Senator Kerry said as far back as 2006, they have to make it work-we can't do that for them.

[beachmom]

4. Yup. It was predictable. But, frankly, I think we should move our troops

completely out. Why should any troop die for bloody Maliki?

also of note, is that a lot of British soldiers are dying in Afghanistan (8 in one 24 hour period). Afghanistan is different from Iraq on so many levels. But Iraq? I am sick of it; frankly, if the Iraqis don't get their act together, I think it is wrong to expect American troops to have to keep all the pieces together for them forever.