Quote Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost View Post
As has been pointed out before, the military surge has only served as a lid for the pressure cooker. The underlying heat has not been addressed, certainly not turned down. Buying off combatants and facilitating community segregation is sensible from a short-term US perspective, but does nothing to reduce tensions.

There are too many conflicting nationalisms and religious fault lines for anything but imperial force to keep them quiet. The US discovered this by having just a holding force for several years, until a proper imperial force was deployed. Even then, it has just solved the attacks on the imperium, and merely reduced those on the now fully segregated communities of the ruled.

I have always maintained that a civil war would be inevitable, and it would be better to let it happen sooner than later. Many more resentments have built up these past few years. I would, I should say, be very happy for my analysis to be utterly wrong - the history of empire however, tells me I am not.

Real, lasting democracies solve their problems through negotiation and disappointment. They have to learn to do this from inside, by accepting that disappointment is best handled peaceably. This learning is tough to impose.
Would a common enemy have helped to unite the fractured Iraq? I floated the idea, strictly theoretical as it had no chance of being put in practice, of the US making itself enough of a bogeyman to make it more hated than anyone else, then giving someone, anyone who isn't a total loon, the chance to "defeat" it. It would be humiliating for the US, but the whole point is to allow itself to be humiliated. However, would the victorious Iraqi leader have enough credibility to unite the country, as the chap(s) who expelled the hated invader? Or has the idea of Iraq disappeared so completely that it would fracture anyway into a post-occupation power struggle?