Needlenose

Juan Cole discusses some of the fall-out from the latest blast in Mess-o-potamia.  Given that the blast wounded some members of the Iraqi parliament, Hadi al-Ameri, a member of parliament rightly asks:

“We’ve heard a lot of brouhaha about successes on the security front,” he said. “Where are these successes?”

Good question.  Seems like things are heading South again, with increasingly brazen attacks reminiscent of the Groundhog Days of ‘04 and ‘05.

In the same post, Juan Cole discusses how affairs between the Kurds and the rest of Iraq are heating up around the flashpoint Kirkuk.  Those of you who aren’t afflicted with American Amnesia might remember how we called Kirkuk out as a flashpoint way back when, and how the Kurds have been continuously working to reclaim demographics and control on the ground in this oil-rich city.

I guess with Obama shifting his focus on our other failing occupation, and with our gradual troop removal the Petreus plan to stabilize the Iraqi Civil War is slowly and painfully coming off, like a band-aid on a hairy leg.

$80+ billion for the war on Iraq and nothing to rebuild Afghanistan – Dubya is daring history to repeat itself.  Before the war, Dubya inadvertently summarized the Gulf War II succinctly: “As I said, this looks like a rerun of a bad movie and I’m not interested in watching it.” He was in fact criticizing Iraq’s cooperation with the U.N. weapons inspectors (which in hindsight, appears to have been nearly complete).

But like any good Hollywood producer, he’s laid the groundwork for a sequel to the Afghan conflict as well. While lavishing more than $80 billion on the Gulf War II, he has apparently reneged on his promise to rebuild Afghanistan. Although the U.S. maintains a military presence in that country, its activities appear to be focused on a futile and expensive cat & mouse game on the Pakistan border as well as protecting “our” bully, Afghani President Karzai (although apparently the privatization-minded Administration has actually outsourced the latter to the corporate mercenaries at DynCorp).

This neglect of the folks we “liberated” in this last war is causing the same sorts of unrest that led to the original emergence of the Taliban from among the numerous thugs and warlords pillaging Afghanistan following the end of the Soviet occupation. In an eery echo of Dubya, Karzai’s brother recently summarized the current situation: “It’s like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem.”

I’m confident that the Oily Men in the White House won’t neglect Iraq completely. My prediction is that U.S. aid, funded at least in part from Iraqi oil revenues, will go into rebuilding Iraq’s petroleum industry. Oil Slick Bush will “pass the buck” for the remaining reconstruction, if any, to its patsy friends in Europe and the U.N. If Afghanistan is any indication, this won’t be a high priority for Dubya. So expect to see these new blockbuster hits:

Afghan War II and Gulf War III!

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