Well, That Was Fast

The doorknob hasn't even hit us on the way out and already we're seeing sectarian shenanigans in Iraq. This totally unexpected turn of events is sure to be met with zero effectual response from the Obama White House.

"Unexpectedly!"

hat tip: Instapundit

The War Is Over Begins?

We are leaving. They are not ready to stand up and defend the Iraq we are leaving. They have powerful political and religious conflicts that have been kept down by our presence. Stand by for any/all of the following:

• Religious/ethnic cleansing dramatically increases. Being anything but the right kind of muslim is about to become very hazardous for the health of anyone in Iraq
• International aggression. Iran will have basically no impediment to taking a large swath of Iraq and making it into the "greater persia" Savage tried to warn us about
• Domestic pressure, rising even to the level of a civil war. The Kurds still are there, you know. The partitioning some of us tried to lobby for may happen without us, after we tried so hard to prevent it.

^ The beginning of something horrible?

And why are we leaving before the local government is ready to defend itself? Duh! It's an election year! There was no defined goal, so there was no victory. In Vietnam at least we had a definite victory before we left the locals to defend themselves twist in the wind.

What's the Worst That Could Happen?

Iraq is lookin' to buy a few more F-16 warplanes. And they're going to be building an islamist government, right next door to Israel. Surely nothing bad will come of this!

President Obama is lookin' to sign a new trans-Pacific free trade zone. He says it will increase US exports and increase jobs. The problem is the same as with all the other so-called free trade zones: it's not FAIR trade when you have FREE trade with someone who can pollute as much as they like and pay employees as little as they like, competing against regulation-bound, minimum-waged USA companies. The exports will be the jobs that are created, as MORE companies try to get maximum value for their production dollars.

Empire: This Ain't It.

In a part of the world unaccustomed to Western-style democratic rule, we intervened to *ahem* liberate the people from a tyrant. Tyrant gone, we stuck around to smoosh a few thousand mujahideen. Then some elections were held. Go figure, it looks like the election results may not be what Washington, Jefferson, and Adams would have liked.

Then we left. Mostly. The people in Iraq understand force, and we removed our ability to project force. Iran, home to the short man who swings a big stick, is right next door, shares the religion of the majority of Iraqis, and has a government with which they are more comfortable.

So Iraq is starting to look more-snuggly with Iran than we would like. Michael Savage wrote four years ago that removing Hussein would lead to the possibility of a greater Persia (Iran + Iraq) united under a common religion. He advocated dividing the country into ethnic regions. This was at the same time the useful idiots in America were bellowing that the war was about President Bush's American Empire.

If it were about Empire, we would have set up a puppet government we liked and stories like this would never need to be written. Well, here comes the greater Persia. Who's for partitioning Iraq now? Show of hands? Anyone?

Lest We Forget The Enemy:

From Jeff Cooper, circa 2003:

Reports from the front indicate that the Arabs cut down all their power lines in order to steal the copper, and then complain bitterly that power is out. Nation building, indeed, has its problems.

So the next time some [deleted] starts trying to give you claptrap about how we don't have electric service back up to sadaam-era levels, mention that the reason, in part, is that the enemy stole the power lines, blew up the substations, and knocked down the towers.

Then ask the wingnut (especially if they are a female wingnut) if they would prefer to still have free standing rooms with large windows, purpose-built for raping (potentially innocent/unconvicted) women prisoners as a form of entertainment for the guards. If they deny the rape rooms' existence, ask them if the holocaust was a hoax, too. Their answer in the affirmative is a positive indicator that you will never get them to see reason, and you should at this point walk away.

Kurds Take Delivery of Tons of Small Arms.

From the Firearm Blog:

The Iraqi Kurds have taken delivery of three C-130 loads of small arms from Bulgaria. Without asking the Iraqi central government's permission first. The Iraqi government is not amused.

The arms are almost certainly for the use of the Kurdish independent militia (pesh merga) forces. The ones who are so effective we used their help in subduing the uppity muslims faithful islamists Tearawrists in Iraq.

This could be completely innocuous, by the way. They have probably been running low on supplies, what with living in a war zone and all. Maybe they're just buying new assault rifles for everybody, and they didn't want US-supplied "sand-jam-special" M4s. Then again, maybe they want to have their own little country, whether Turkey and Iraq like it or not.

We shall see.

Sons of Iraq: Arrest Not Recommended

The Iraqi government is trying to arrest the leaders of the Sons of Iraq. This is possibly a very Bad Idea. I can see trying to dissuade them from being all shooty by themselves, if security on the ground allows it, or maybe doing more to turn them into regular forces. But threatening arrest? Smells like the beginnings of a new class of enemy to me.

Right, so you don't know what I'm talking about. You didn't hear about that in between commercials whilst watching American Idle. Not even the network news had time to mention it. Background, more here.

Minor News, Nothing Much Really. . .

So here's something I didn't notice blasted all over the alphabet networks (yet? we'll see, not holding my breath). Seems to me like this is a major advancement, but hey what do I know.

On Monday, U.S. commanders formally returned responsibility for keeping order in Anbar Province, once the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, to the Iraqi Army and police. The ceremony, including a parade on a freshly paved street, capped one of the most significant turnabouts in the country since the war began five and a half years ago."

Obama of course would have taken a different route, using "just words" to counteract the "just murder" being done to the Iraqi people and our fighting men. Remember that when you vote the Democrat ticket this December.