Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The gains of Petraeus only delay hopes of peace for Iraq

Simon Jenkins
Wednesday September 12, 2007
The Guardian

".......The Iraqi government is now propped up by corruption and US protection, and has no interest in another supposed reconciliation with de facto separatist Sunnis. Nor have the implications of Kurdish autonomy been addressed. Does the US really want to police the competing claims to Kirkuk's oilfields and Kurdistan's border with Turkey? Does it want to sponsor another Israel? Does it really intend to stay indefinitely in the hope of "doing" some undefined "job"?

Iraq is not a military war. It is anarchy, order suspended through a hamfisted intervention in another country's affairs. The country needs help, but cannot possibly use it as long as the landscape is one of bombs, bullets, militias, refugees, gangsters, thieves and assassins, today's accompaniments of what is cynically called "liberal intervention". Any fool can create a wilderness and call it peace.

Petraeus's gains do not hasten peace, they only postpone it."

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