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2007-09-06 Iraq

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Posted by ryuge 2007-09-06 07:45|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top
File under: Iraqi Insurgency

#1 I haven't even looked at this - is it a reprise of Bremer's long overdue and vastly understated column in the WSJ last year making the same basic point? This is perhaps the most egregious and bizarre example of the detachment from reality that has characterized so much discussion of Iraq. Yet there are folks who go beyond sheer ignorance to claim, hilariously, that "if only" - somehow - the little bits and pieces of the self-disbanded and utterly useless Iraqi army had been reassembled, it somehow would have .... uh, you know ... uh .... made things easier for us.

Having not lived through other extended debates this lame, I don't know if it's fairly typical to have such an obvious counter-factual myth seized upon as the first step in an utterly illogical march to a false conclusion.

Which reminds me, I owe Steve White an answer to his question from a comment thread last week, in which I referred to The Three Actual Mistakes in Iraq (meaning the 3 most important ones, and most avoidable ones). Disbanding the worse-than-useless and already self-disbanded Iraqi army was not on the list. I'm trying to remember which one I mentioned - but I think the other two were not suppressing the Sunnis, and not taking the fight very heavily to Syria and Iran. Both measures not only would have certainly left Iraq less worse now, but would have advanced the key broader objectives of intimidation of the Sunni world and the overdue smackdown of the mullahs in Tehran for their decades-long war against us.

Oh yes - the other key mistake was a more mundane one, but one which I think made quite a difference in undermining basic security in Iraq. Energy prices should have been decontrolled immediately. Oil smuggling was the key aspect of black-market and corrupt public sector activity throughout the CPA and early sovereignty years, and was a multi-faceted disaster: it undermined state institution integrity and thus public confidence in a new Iraq, and was the lifeblood of many mafias, including Iran-linked ones in the south that of course became part of the constellation of Iran-linked outlaw outfits bedeviling Iraq today.

Immediate and total decontrol of energy prices was of course the only sane economic policy as well, as it always is - but in this case the artificial and avoidable creation of a vast criminal smuggling enterprise with strong links to the main meddling neighbor state was a political and security as well as economic disaster.

Posted by Verlaine 2007-09-06 11:26|| 2007-09-06 11:26|| Front Page Top

#2 The Coalition Provisional Authority made immediate efforts at mass recruitment of police personnel, after the liberation. Iraqi army personnel joined civil units, in spite of Sunni Arab attacks on recruitment centers. But, when the CPA outlawed "Baathism" the effect of same was the degradation of secularism in Iraq. Clerics like al-Sadr stepped into the breach, and Iraq's first post Saddam constitution was Islamic, and ensured effective Shiite legislative control. It would have been better to promote secular institutions to co-exist with religious ones. However, everything looks simple in hindsight.

Posted by McZoid 2007-09-06 19:59|| 2007-09-06 19:59|| Front Page Top

#3 However, everything looks simple in hindsight.

Indeed.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-09-06 20:24|| 2007-09-06 20:24|| Front Page Top

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