Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

In a typically clear eyed, fact-based assessment by Patrick Cockburn in CounterPunch, Cockburn paints a picture of Iraq that whatever the pretend nature of our enterprise, the results are a catastrophe.

This is pretty standard stuff in most of the rest of the world, but one wonders how much of the American populace either knows or cares. Not at all clear.

Cockburn concludes:

Friction between Sunni and Shia, bad though it is, is less than two years ago, though hostility between Arabs and Kurds is deepening. The departure of the US military frightens many Sunni on the grounds that they will be at the mercy of the majority Shia. But it is also an incentive for the three main communities in Iraq to agree about what their future relations should be when there are no Americans to stand between them. As for the US, its moment in Iraq is coming to an end as its troops depart, leaving a ruined country behind them.

Let's hope that most Americans do not ape Rumsfeld and say: Stuff happens.