Getting real on the fake state that was Iraq
ARTICLE: "Situation Called Dire in West Iraq: Anbar Is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says," by Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, 11 September, 2006; p. A1.These two articles, in combination, basically diagnose where we are today on Iraq. Friedman's dead-on in his analysis that we've lost the basic "middle" of Iraq by not quelling the insurgency, which is largely Sunni-based (both the Bathiists and Al Qaeda, plus local tribes). The Shiia held off for quite some time in retaliating, which is why I wrote in BFA that Sistani deserved the Nobel Peace Prize last year, not the bomb counters from the UN (a process that never leads to peace, but merely follows it on occasion).OP-ED: "The Central Truth: Don't blame the fringes for Iraq," by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 8 September 2006, p, A27.
The patience of the Shiia, our most valued asset in Iraq, eventually evaporated. Now the fight is full-blown between Sunni and Shiia, and despite all the papering-over WRT Lebanon, that's still a defining characteristic of potential and real and future violence in the region.
I know Graham Fuller, former vice chair of the National Intell Council, says you can easily oversell the Sunni-Shiia split, and I agree to a certain extent--so long as Israel's kept up front in the debate. But in Iraq, Israel doesn't matter, and there we see the true implications of Vali Nasr's description of the Shiia revival.
It was fear of that revival that has driven me, since the fall of 2004, to argue for some sort of rapprochment with Iran.
If we lose the Shiia in the region, the potential for internecine war there is significant, and when that happens, as it's happening in Iraq today, we'll lose more than the Sunni triangle.
To me, that's what is so frightening about the "stay the course," deer-in-the-headlights look we're getting from W. right now. Forget strategic imagination. I just want some clear sense of strategic diagnosis.