No amount of papering over of the deep and serious fractures that exist in post-Saddam Iraq can cover up the reality that Iraq today is a failed nation state.
The year 2006 will be the year in which America reaps what it has sown in Iraq. The "democratic government" of the SCIRI theocratic tyranny will serve to finally rupture the tragic nation state we once recognized as Iraq into a cauldron of competing fiefdoms, all of whom will be engaged in a life-or-death civil war that has the characteristics more akin to a wildfire than any known political process. Stuck in the middle will be the armed forces of the United States, powerless to stop the fighting which will erupt around them, and incapable of preventing themselves from getting scorched by the flames of civil conflict they helped fuel and ignite.
The flames that will consume Iraq will not only threaten Americans on the ground in Iraq, but also the territory of Iraq's neighbors. Given the fact that the genesis of American involvement in Iraq had nothing to do with bringing legitimate democratic rule to the Iraqi people, but rather was part of an overall strategy of "regional transformation" which seeks regime change not only in Iraq, but also Iran, Syria and elsewhere, the real danger isn't how the Bush administration will react to the devolving situation inside Iraq, but rather to the instability engendered outside of Iraq. Given the recent war-like rhetoric emanating from the White House regarding Syria and Iran, it doesn't take any stretch of the imagination (although it does boggle the mind) to see where we might be headed vis-à-vis the Middle East in 2006.
But that is the subject of a future essay. Happy New Year.
