what did you expect?

okay...the good work in iraq is done....they have a new constitution and their security forces are capable enough that our troops have removed themselves from urban centers and their commanders are turning their thoughts to the afghan poppy fields...and yet the suicide bombings go on...the kurds in the north are working quietly on their own constitution and planning to take kirkuk to control the northern oil...the shiite millitias in the south are still armed and waiting..and politicians in baghdad and washington talk about a non-existant "unity"...iraq is an abstraction at best...created from the old ottoman provinces of baghdad and basra by the british in 1921 under the mandate they received from the leauge of nations...in 1926 they added the province of mosul and created a pseudo-nation of arabs, curds, shiites, sunnis, assyrians, armenians, and iraqi turkmen which has owed its "unity" mostly to a series of kings, millitary dictators, and foreign interventions...the last dictator is gone and the occupation is winding down...everyone who was ever gassed or shot at or forcibly relocated is going to have an axe to grind and when the lids off they will grind away...another failed attempt at imperial nation building? no doubt. that still leaves the nagging question of why we thought that a bit of outside interference was in order in the first place...after all saddam was a client of ours during the reagan years...fought a proxy war aginst the evil iranians for us...shook don ruimsfeld's hand at a photo op...he was on our side...at least until he started making noise like he was going to try to corner the kuwaiti oil market...the bushes are oilmen and that got their attention...somnething had to be done...the first bush sent sadam back inside his own borders and felt that that was enough...bad pr to go in for the kill on a former client with so many still on the rolls...the first bush was ex-cia and understood the value of intimidated assets...the second bush was just stupid, but his handlers saw an opportunity to create a subservient client in the wake of one gone rouge...a client that would represent imperial energy interest and povide a safe base of operations in the area, at least until the oil gave out...then it wouldn't matter...the empire is only as strong as its energy resources, and even if it didn't need to directly control the oil it did need a direct presence in the are so no-one would get the wrong idea about who was top dog in the energy market...unfortunately the cultures that make up iraq aren't co-operating...they don't seem to mix well, and they all seem to have agendas with the empires energy plans well down the list...our little adventure in nation building isn't going to work out any better than the one the british tried eighty-eight years ago...in the end, left to their own devices, the people who live there will decide if they're a nation or not...kurdistan in the north...a shiite state affilliated with iran in the south...and some sunni dominated hellhole of a rump iraqi state inbetween...welcome to the empire.