What seems like a lifetime ago, I told a friend that invading Iraq was a disaster. He argued about "weapons of mass destruction" and I said let them have them. This sent all sort of shockwaves until I explained my reasoning. To preemptively invade was a betrayal of everything that the United State represented. To do so before Afghanistan was handled was the height of arogance. History said that entering Iraq without overwhelming world support and manpower would be a disaster that destabilized the whole of the Middle East.
Unfortunately for thousands upon thousands of lives, I get to say "I told you so". Now it becomes a matter of how to get out without a civil war that will mean even more deaths. Putting on my prognosticators hat, the only way out is to divide Iraq into three or more parts.
Kurdistan exists only as a fiction right now even if they do advertise on TV as "The Other Iraq". They are secular, wealthy with oil and ready to join the modern world even if Turkey as a NATO member objects.
The Sunni and Shiites need to divide along religious lines either by joining surrounding countries or simply dividing what is left of the country with some agreement as to oil revenues.
Anyone who knows anything about The Ottoman Empire from the 1600's through to it's final breakup after WWII knows that Iraq is not natural geographically or socially, and it is time for it to come to an end.
We can only hope that someone will point this out to the President before the whole of the Middle East goes up in flames and even more lives are wasted by this ill advised adventure.
3 comments:
I'm sure that you were a history professor in a previous life -- that is before retirement. Since I haven't lectured in more than two years now, I keep wondering how many of my students in the 2002-2004 era are saying, "my political science professor was right when he said there were three nations or societies contained in what we now call Iraq." That's a fancy way of saying, "I told you so."
Thanks, Jamie, for the cheering up over at my blog. It's been a blue funk week or two what with all the tragedies going on around the world, including two, not one, serial killers on the loose here in the Phoenix area. The police caught one of them (actually two shooters working together) this past weekend.
I enjoy your entries over at CL, but wonder when you sleep? LOL! See, I'm cheered up already.
Eprof2,
Thanks for dropping by. You may be write about the previous life. All I know is that even as a small child, I loved other cultures and history so most of everything I read or heard stayed in the brain.
As to sleeping. One of the advantages of age and retirement is that I get to do things in two hour bits including sleeping and blogging. If something interesting is happening on the list, I jump in and then go do other stuff for a while. :-)
Stay cheerful.
yes, we were talking about that just the other day..
split it up - make seperate states
but i doubt that we have that power..
as the other thing they ever wanted was contol of the oil in the middle east
i wonder if their pea brains have thought longer than 10-20 years out?? seriously, oil will be gone - so what will they have to hold over our heads??
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