Disturbing Trends

Three disturbing but unsurprising news items have appeared recently. The number of independently combat-ready Iraqi batallions is down to one, the Shiites are trying to rewrite the rules for constitutional approval in their favor, and Kurds are starting to grumble about the Shiite leadership.

People say that Iraqis need to start defending themselves but they already have. Effective Iraqi fighting forces exist, just none belonging to our puppet national government. Kurds have the Peshmerga, Shiites have militias, and Sunnis arabs have the insurgency. None of them intend to fight for American goals not aligned with their own.

The Kurdish goal is to separate, de facto if not de jure. Should the Shiites renege on constitutional guarantees to the Kurds, the latter will completely split, taking much of Iraq's oil with them. The Shiites want a patina of legitimacy on their new power, for which they will endure American meddling until after the elections. They have no intention of letting Sunni arabs have a veto over that outcome. Their attempt to rewrite the election rules in their favor has backfired, but it should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that the Shiites consider constitutional protections a necessary evil leading to their ascendancy.

Sunni arabs know that and, not wanting to be stuck in a million acres of useless desert, are going to fight for two essential things: some oil, for which they will defend Kirkuk, and half of Baghdad. Both of these will probably entail civil war, since the Kurds and Shiites respectively are unlikely to accommodate them.

I'd suggest that we pull out, but politically that's not an option. Not even a half trillion dollars will buy us an outcome that we like, but there's nothing to do except watch it unfold.