Bush gives Iraq a civil war

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20070103/1015790.asp

The saga of Saddam's end - his capture, trial and execution - is a sad metaphor for America's occupation of Iraq.

What might have gone right went so wrong. It is worth remembering that Saddam Hussein was not your run-of-the-mill dictator. He created one of the most brutal, corrupt and violent regimes in modern history, something akin to Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China or Kim Jong Il's North Korea. Whatever the strategic wisdom for the United States, deposing him began as something unquestionably good for Iraq.

But soon the Bush administration dismissed the idea of trying Saddam under international law, or in a court with any broader legitimacy. This is the administration, after all, that could see little advantage to a United Nations mandate for its own invasion and occupation. It put Saddam's fate in the hands of the new Iraqi government, dominated by Shiite and Kurdish politicians who had been victims of his reign. As a result, Saddam's trial, which should have been the judgment of civilized society against a tyrant, is now seen by Iraq's Sunnis and much of the Arab world as a farce, reflecting only the victors' vengeance.

This was not inevitable. Most Iraqis were happy to see Saddam out of power. In the months after the American invasion, support for the Coalition Provisional Authority topped 70 percent. This was so even among Iraq's Sunni Arabs. But during those crucial first months Washington disbanded the Iraqi Army, fired 50,000 bureaucrats and shut down the government-owned enterprises that employed most Iraqis. In effect, America dismantled the Iraqi state, leaving a deep security vacuum, administrative chaos and soaring unemployment. That state was dominated by Iraq's Sunni elites, who read this not as just a regime change but a revolution in which they had become the new underclass. To them, the new Iraq looked like a new dictatorship. snip

It has now become fashionable among Washington neoconservatives to blame the Iraqis for everything that has happened to their country. But the Bush administration is not quite so blameless. It thoughtlessly engineered a political and social revolution as intense as the French or Iranian one and then seemed surprised that Iraq could not digest it happily, peaceably and quickly. We did not give them a republic. We gave them a civil war.

[starmaker]

1. Intentional Chaos

To believe that this was thoughtlessly engineered and not planned
diverts attention from economic reasons for chaos and the intended result.