[Peace-discuss] Iraq: what ethnic violence?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[I don't know if you're really naive, Randall, but I do think that you're
generally correct on this point. There are of course communal differences
in the rather artificial state of Iraq, but the primary responsibility of
the US is to get out as fast as possible and pay substantial reparations
-- to be administered so that they don't end up in the coffers of US (or
UK) companies.  Here's a good brief analysis of the ethnic positions in an
article by one of the best foreign correspondents.  --CGE]

	September 16, 2003
	A Failure of Historic Proportions
	The Iraq Wreck
	By PATRICK COCKBURN

A friend representing a French company in Washington recently went with
some trepidation to Paris with the unwelcome news that he had been told by
the Pentagon that there was absolutely no chance of his employers getting
a contract in Iraq.

He was not looking forward to report total failure of his well-paid
efforts but to his relief the chairman greeted the dire news with
prolonged laughter saying: "Don't worry. Let's just wait a year or two and
then it will be American companies which won't be able to do business with
the Iraqis."

This could be discounted as the evil-minded French watching with delight
as the US, with Tony Blair loyally chugging behind, sinking deeper into
the Iraqi quagmire. But the quite correct perception that theUShas already
failed in Iraq is becoming the common consensus in Iraq as well as much of
the rest of the world.

It is a failure of historic proportions. The aim of the war in Iraq was to
establish the US as the world super power which could act unilaterally,
virtually without allies inside or outside Iraq. The timing of the
conflict had nothing to do with fear of Saddam's weapons of mass
destruction and everything to do with getting the war won in time for the
run up to next year's Presidential election in the US.

The US failure to win a conclusive victory in Iraq is like that of Britain
in South Africa during the Boer War. Like the US Britain went into the war
filled with arrogant presumptions about an easy victory. As the conflict
dragged on, with a constant trickle of casualties from attacks by the
elusive Boers, nationalists from Dublin to Bombay drew the conclusion that
the British Empire was not quite as tough as it looked.

But the speed of the American failure in Iraqis still extraordinary.
President Bush started off the year with a powerful army and a deeply and
rightly unpopular opponent in the shape of Saddam Hussein, always detested
by most the Iraqi population. The Iraqi army was a wreck, its officers and
men barely fed, its aging tanks without spare parts for a dozen years.