By Dave Anderson:
As Steve noted earlier today, this was a "quiet" week in Iraq:
Meanwhile, in Iraq, a week of "reduced" violence that doesn't even merit much Western press coverage any more, plus a high-profile attack on a Sunni mosque at Tal Afar today, has cost 81 lives. According to the recieved wisdom, that's "success".
Anywhere else, excluding the Congo basin, 81 deaths due to political violence would be international headline news, instead it is the continuation of the ongoing civil war due to the lack of a viable political reconciliation. Instead the checks that used to buy this month's loyalty and quiet from certain combatants are arriving later and later if they show up at all. Pat Lang has more on this:
If that is the case, the recent "backsliding" in levels of revolutionary consciousness in Iraq ought to be disturbing. What is happening in Iraq is that the mindless, political science inspired belief in the historic inevitability and desirability of nation-states has re-asserted itself among American government people enough so that the US is willing to let the Shia government neglect our "friends" among the Sunni Arabs and other former insurgents. The result is typical Middle Eastern style "signalling" that worse things will happen if the situation continues to degenerate from the Sunni Arab point of view. Life is tough and often tougher than it need be if you are stupid.
Those who think we can abandon our former "friends" to the tender attention of the purple thumbed Maliki government are just foolish.
Interests outlast friends. The Sunni Arabs as a group have interests and a willingness to use one batch of foreigners to beat up on the other batch of foreigners until the circumstances and threat levels changed. Sunni Arab interests of collecting security rents have remained constant and unless their rent is paid, they will have the capability to make sure there is insecurity in Iraq.
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