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There is sadly little or nothing of surprise or mystery with how the events in Iraq are unfolding in the wake of Fallujah. Those of us who have long opposed the invasion of Iraq knew that the longer coalition troops stayed, the more they would be resented, even by those who did not oppose the invasion outright at its inception. Longstanding suspicion of Anglo-American colonization and intervention in the middle east has a deep and justifiable history. Blowback for generations to come is a certainty. PNAC has its perfect puppet in Bush, and their dream of a permanent hegemony in Iraq is facing its first real test since the fall of Baghdad.
The increasing and inevitable nativist resentment ranges from the mild - rock-throwing and jeering - to the morbidly grotesque, as in Fallujah. In between those two extremes are truck bombs, suicide attacks, rockets and grenades fired with random precision. In a form of denial on the potential for human brutality, the western media dismisses such acts as the Fallujah atrocities as an anomaly of the "Sunni Triangle" or an aberration that happens once in a hundred wars. If it were only so easy.
Beyond the religious factions of the Sunni and Shiite Muslims at eternal odds, or the dangers of semi-imaginary geometric niceties like the "Triangle", nationalist and ethnic frictions, or all manners of internecine disruption unlisted here, there is the nagging problem of how this continues to cast shadows on the domestic political landscape. What divides Iraq is dividing Americans. While Iraq heats up, the rhetoric out of the White House is predictably cynical and inane. In their own form of either deception or denial (and do they not do both?), they play up the June 30 withdrawal deadline, as if to soothe us: "Never mind the deployment of more troops or the fierce combat in Ramadi, we're almost done! Democracy and freedom are just around the corner!"
If it were only so easy. The fact that the Bush regime sells it as such, with a complicit media in tow, proves the level of contempt they hold for the rest of us. Cynical does not even begin to describe their craven arrogance.
It is rash to predict just what will happen in Iraq between now and the promised land of June 30. But surely the events of today, and this past week, do not bode well for the scant dozen weeks or so until then. The crystal ball is filled with sand.
If the civil strife worsens, the coalition forces will be just one of many factions in several crossfires. Some former enemies will unite, not by design or treaty - but by common cause - against the occupiers. Once firm alliances will crack. The puppet government will not hold. No matter how "successful" the Pentagon spins the resolution, no one will win. Least of all the people of Iraq.
Should Iraq descend into civil war, the U.S.-led coalition forces will surely have to revert to combat mode, as is happening already - mission unaccomplished - or get out. It will be beyond June 30 by then.
But will Iraq descend into civil war? Or will this week be a prelude to more eruptions of reactive attacks and reprisals between coalition troops and whichever faction we have managed to anger and disrupt? The instability of late means the status quo of attack and react cannot hold. The mutual cycle of retaliation and violence escalated today. More Fallujahs? Perhaps. Another Vietnam? We should dare not conceive. Quagmire? Shut up and keep your head in the sand.
The sand. It is "not the jungle" we are told. Shut up, and don't ask questions, traitor.
If it were only so easy.
And now, surely it will only be harder.
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