Iraq

Zack Beauchamp has many posts on Iraq on Vox. His 11 facts that explain the escalating crisis in Iraq is a great summary of all the points. I learned a lot.

I completely agree with Kevin Drum on this turn of events, No, Staying in Iraq Wouldn't Have Changed Anything.

This is one of those Rorschach developments, where all of us are going to claim vindication for our previously-held points of view. The hawks will claim this is all the fault of President Obama, who was unable to negotiate a continuing presence of US troops after our withdrawal three years ago. Critics of the war will claim that this shows Iraq was never stable enough to defend regardless of the size of the residual American presence.

And sure enough, I'm going to play to type. I find it fantastical that anyone could read about what's happening and continue to believe that a small US presence in Iraq could ever have been more than a Band-Aid. I mean, just read the report. Two divisions of Iraqi soldiers turned tail in the face of 800 insurgents. That's what we got after a decade of American training. How can you possibly believe that another few years would have made more than a paper-thin difference? Like it or not, the plain fact is that Iraq is too fundamentally unstable to be rebuilt by American military force. We could put fingers in the dikes, but not much more.

I did in fact always think that after we left, whenever that was, that Iraq would break down into sectarian violence again. Shocker it's Sunnis vs Shias with the Kurds off to the side. No I didn't anticipate the Shia administration being so oppressive to the Sunnis and I didn't expect Iran to send forces to help the government. I also didn't anticipate how the war in Syria would affect Iraq. I know that drought had a big effect in Syria and don't know about the affected regions in Iraq. None of those things make me think we should go back in. I do wonder if Joe Biden wasn't right all along, that the country should just be broken up into three; but that's for them to decide.