IRAQ - SITUATION HOPELESS

My principle contention is that it is a grave moral wrong to maintain the current situation in Iraq which is causing the continued suffering of the Iraqi people.

What can be said with certainty is the situation now is far worst for the Iraqi people than before the invasion, and short of an American withdrawal, perhaps problematic, there does not seem to be any hope. I suppose one alternative might conceively be to increase the number of foreign police and troops to create civil peace, but the context of invasion makes this proposal impractical. So, I think we are left with a staged withdrawal.

And it is not just American bombers and soldiers that go around killing randomly, nor will the absence of Zarqawi make any difference. Juan Cole considers the implications of the reported death of Zarqawi on the situation in Iraq:

Zarqawi had been a significant leader of the Salafi Jihadi radical strain of Islamist volunteers in Iraq, and had succeeded in spreading his ideas to local Iraqis in places like Ramadi. He engaged in grandstanding when he renamed his group “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” even though he had early been critical of al-Qaeda and had a long rivalry with it. For background, see the Zarqawi file.

There is no evidence of operational links between his Salafi Jihadis in Iraq and the real al-Qaeda; it was just a sort of branding that suited everyone, including the US. Official US spokesmen have all along over-estimated his importance. Leaders are significant and not always easily replaced. But Zarqawi has in my view has been less important than local Iraqi leaders and groups. I don’t expect the guerrilla war to subside any time soon.

Baqubah is dangerous not because of Zarqawi but because it is a mixed Sunni-Shiite and Kurdish area that had Baath military installations and arms depots, and enough Sunni Arabs from the old regime know about them to work them against rising Shiite and Kurdish dominance.

On the other hand, there have been persistent reports of a split between the main arm of the guerrilla resistance, the Sunni Arab Iraqis, and Zarqawi’s group.

According to the BBC report Zarqawi is claimed to have been killed in an airstrike, and we are not supposed to notice that aerial bombing does not distinguish between the quilty and the innocent.

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