it is still way too early to say what the result of the war in iraq will be, for either side. . the occupation isn’t over till the troops are gone and the dust has settled. it could take several years at least for the situation to become clear.
still…
there is speculation now about just what the aims of the war were from the American point of view*. wmds were never a serious issue. noone believed it. the oil.. well, a week or so ago there was an attempt by the Iraqi government to sell rights to it.. no one was interested.. no one wants to go there. the risks to fragile capital are too great. and it is not clear if the oil there hasn’t peaked anyway---- it quite possibly has. (peak oil is when the well runs dry)
so.. exactly why the usa became involved in this operation is not clear.
joseph stiglitz costs the effort at 3 trillion. he acknowledges it as a conservative estimate. he made the estimate before the unfortunate series of consequences subsequent to the subprime crisis in mid 2008 . (he didn’t seem to really expect it which makes me wonder a bit about the bean counting of joseph stiglitz).
it has turned out to be like the super-delux version of black hawk down.
so why did they do it?
iraq was a tumor in the body politic of planet earth and had been for 1000 years. something was needed to move the blockage that was personified in saddam hussein. I think the usa was right to remove him as part of an attempt to totally reorient that country/region. it needed an outside force to change the tune coming out of baghdad.
however.
like in the movie black hawk down, there has been a huge miscalculation, both of the depth of the problem in 'iraq', and the nature of the us military.
the central problem is and has been the civil war between the two major factions in the religion of islam. this is what has kept Baghdad in a quagmire for the last millennium and there are the strongest reasons for it. it will take more than external intervention to get to the root of this and kill it as it should definitely be killed.. if that was indeed the aim of the usa, then they may ultimately be vindicated. it may even go some way towards paying for some of the very bad policy that put saddam and other lunatics like him in power in the first place.
now is not the time and here is not the place for criticism of technique/behaviour. fate itself decrees the consequences of this kind of action.
if that is to be the eventual result of the war-- (peace between the jarring sects and the blockage removed.…)-- then we should see that old phoenix that shakespere mentioned rise once again.. I for one really hope so. . its definitely time.
*
*as for the ultimate aim of saddam, well..apart from the obvious ambition of militarists everywhere, it seems he wanted to destroy the Iranian revolution, the kurds and perpetuate the fragmentation of the people of the planet..
...