Diana,
I’m surprised you give credence to the piece by Stratfor. It is very likely disinformation put out by people who have their own interests at heart, and care little about the United States.
Saddam’s capture is a negative, for the simple reason that Shites (and Kurds too for that matter) can now enter the fray, knowing that success will not lead to his return.
Iraq is now like a country facing an election in which there is no incumbent, but with this difference: the winner will not be determined by votes but by means traditional to the region – power struggle, low level warfare, quality of leadership, cruelty.
There is no reason to suppose that guerrilla forces opposing the Americans are Baathists. Rather, they are loosely coordinated groups, pursuing various agendas, united in only one particular: a desire to get the Americans out.
I think the best way to view the situation is to understand that we Americans in Mesopotamia are essentially irrelevant. We will stay until tired of losing men and money, then we will go, and the people there will sort themselves out.
The only way that we can change this, and make ourselves relevant, is to resort to terror on a mass scale and genocide. I don’t think we have reached that place yet. |
