What I feared would happen after the election in Iraq is starting to come to fruitition. A Great Article in the New York Times this morning Titled
"U.S. Asks others to Pressure Iraq to be Inclusive."
Some interesting tidbits.
The Bush administration, seeking to close the continuing rift between Shiite and dissident Sunni Arab leaders in Iraq, is enlisting Europe, the Arab world and the United Nations to pressure the Baghdad government to include minorities in the political process, administration and other diplomats say.
That statment itself is ironic but there's more
Though the Baghdad government has taken some steps in reaching out to Sunni Arabs, the administration has found it hard to persuade it to do more while acting alone. In part, that is because the new government, confident in its popular mandate, is less open to American influence, and the United States, not wanting to be seen as manipulating Iraqi politics, has not wanted to press harder alone
Later this month there will be an Iraqi donor conference in Brussels...How ironic that were having a conference on Iraq months after presidential candidate John Kerry called for one as the center piece of his Iraq strategy and was chastised by Bush who responded by saying "I've been to Summits, Not a lot gets done"
Which leads into this great tidbit by a leaker
The ostensible reason for the conference is for the international community to recognize the legitimacy of the newly elected Iraqi government," said an administration official, asking not to be identified because of the implicit criticism of the new government of Mr. Jaafari. "The other reason, less stated publicly, is to get the Iraq government to commit to steps so that it is not a narrowly based Shiite regime."
And then the hammer
A Western diplomat with extensive contacts in Iraq said the new Iraqi government was not as amenable to pressure as the Iraqi Governing Council, its predecessor. The council members were put in place by the American-led occupation administration, chosen mainly from among exile leaders.
"This is not an American puppet government anymore," said the diplomat. "It's standing up to the United States because it feels it has been elected and has legitimacy."
The first administration official said, "Despite the rhetoric and the to-ing and fro-ing in Washington, people in Washington are getting more worked up over Iraq as their influence on the ground becomes less and less."
So what does this all mean? In my opinion, the newly elected shiite government is not overly interested in allowing the sunnis more participation. Which will force the insurgency to escalate in an attempt to discredit the government. It also tells us that the new Shiite government is leaning more towards an Iranian view of Iraq with firm shiite authority and a religous based government. This will force the sunnis and the Kurds to strive for autonomy. Which will first come in the quest for a state system written in the constitution but will ineveitably end up as separate countries over a long period of civil wars and ethnic religious genocide. As for the US, we will keep training the New Iraqi Army to coincide with our current exit strategy, However there will be no Iraqi Army or a central Iraqi government in the future. Basically we are training shiite and kurdish militias who will be better armed and trained for the upcoming civil war. Ironically, I think we will eventually be supporting the Kurdish Sunni factions in the upcoming civil war against the Iranian back shiites that were elected in our victorious Middle East democracy policy. Anyways its a cluster fuck...no matter what happens...What did the british memo say about cost/benefit? Something about how can we remove Saddam and change regimes to something that isn't radical Islamic and doesn't promote sectarian feuds...I'm glad we thought this through...(snark)