It's No Accident

Despite a serious setback here and there, I still have to conclude that the world is a better place than it was on the day before the US election. In the meantime, Iraq has taken a turn for the even worse, but unless you've been living under a rock or in the United States for the last three and a half years, you knew that that was inevitable.

Iraq has been a violent place for decades, but it took the imperialist war of aggression and its attendant chaos to turn it into the kind of country it is now: a hellish communal bloodbath like Lebanon or Bosnia, where people take guns to kill or expel people of a different religion from neighborhoods where they have lived side-by-side for generations. In response to the latest events, the closest thing to a dovish analysis that we're seeing from the US press is the idea that "our troops are caught in the middle." And so there you have it: our boys, as always, are a hapless pack of innocents abroad, mired in atavistic "ancient hatreds" that are unfortunate and intractable but never, ever of our making. It's all the Natives' fault.

If this attitude finally works to get the US out of Iraq, then that's fine by me. It should now be clear to just about everyone (except maybe some Ba'athist bitter-enders!) that what anti-imperialists have been saying all along is true: Iraq is a lot better off in the hands of Muqtada al-Sadr than it is in the hands of Uncle Sam. At least he lives there.

That said, we all owe Iraq a lot -- once they have a government capable of accepting our reparations. Which looks like it will be a while, unfortunately.

Technorati tags: Iraq, imperialist war of aggression