Credit the Brits for telling it like it is instead of pulling the wool over their leaders’ eyes. A recently leaked memo from William Patey, outgoing British ambassador to Iraq, to Tony Blair and his cabinet showed just how much worse the situation in Iraq is than what British and American leaders have been saying publicly:
“[T]he prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy.
“Even the lowered expectation of President Bush for Iraq — a government that can sustain itself, defend itself and govern itself and is an ally in the war on terror — must remain in doubt.”
When you invade a country without doing your homework about its civilian divisions and without having a plan in place for ensuring peace after you yell “Mission Accomplished,” you should not be surprised when you are stricken by the Law of Unintended Consequences. Instead of a democratic Iraq with arbitrary borders established by colonialists we are more likely to see a country divided along its sectarian lines, with radical religious groups perhaps having a country-within-a-country similar to Hezbollah’s presence in Lebanon. The fragile hold of democracy cannot bind groups together that would prefer to kill each other than live with each other.
We’ve spent $300 billion and counting to break up a country, incite instability, and foment the exportation of terrorism. The only mission accomplished was to make the world a far more dangerous place while lining our soldiers up for slaughter. So much for Bush’s vision of a “new Middle East.”
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