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How Rumsfeld created the Iraq Quagmire
Because the Sunnis had oppressed the Kurds and Shiites since the 1800s — especially under Saddam — a unified Iraq was next to impossible without a dictator. That's why Bush I didn't try toppling Saddam; he went with the dictator.
The neocons, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. argued: get rid of Saddam, and "we will be greeted as liberators," and the Iraqis will set up a western-style market democracy and use all that oil money to rebuild their country.
But from the day we took Baghdad, Iraq has taken a more predictable course. Anarchy broke out and every government ministry except oil, which we guarded, was looted and destroyed. The insurgency sprang up; Al Qaeda moved in; the Shi'ite militias counter-attacked the Sunni insurgency, and Iran funded the Shi'ites while Syria and Saudi Arabia backed the Sunnis.
Had they followed Colin Powell's doctrine of "overwhelming force," and not Rumsfeld's high-tech shock-and-awe strategy, they might have succeeded. But without enough troops, with little international support, and with no plan, Iraq was doomed to slide into sectarian civil war.
The US told fundamentalist Shi'ite Prime Minister Maliki to stop the Shi'ite/Sunni split. Didn't work. The US pulled troops out of Al Qaeda's territory and sent them to Baghdad. Didn't work. Unfortunately, the spiral of revenge killing and torture appears likely to continue even with the proposed "change in course." As noted above, separating the sides is probably not feasible.
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http://zfacts.com/p/551.html | 11/20/08 12:40 GMT
Modified: Sun, 22 Oct 2006 08:59:41 GMT
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