...Consider the stunning magnitude of the failure. Iraq has been the top priority for the world's only superpower for the past three years, and a central one for many regional and international powers. The United States, intent on keeping Iraq together, has spent more resources in that country than any state ever has spent on another in the history of the world... In this perspective, one central measure of success of the intervention in Iraq is this: Three years later, have the prospects of regional and global security increased or decreased? The answer should propel a debate that's bigger than Iraq.

Challenge Bigger than Iraq
See also Defeat or a Widening War -- or Both?
posted by y2karl on Apr 9, 2006 - 60 comments

From on the ground in Iraq, with death squads on the prowl in a nation paralysed by fear, with each mile, the divisions deepen. Some suggest Iraq is about to look a lot like Lebanon. Others think we should be so lucky, that what looms is much worse than mere civil war: an archipegalo of complete and total anarchy, the war of all against all.

As the saying goes, even a blind squirrel may find an acorn now and then, especially one planetary in size--like here: predictions of a better Middle East have evaporated.
posted by y2karl on Mar 20, 2006 - 108 comments

At this point in Iraq, you do not have a central government -- so you don't have a legitimate authority running the country. You don't have a government with the power to establish or maintain order. What you have is a nominal government that can only stay in power because the Americans are there. The government is supposed to have derived legitimacy from the constitution and the elections. It is now almost three months after the elections and there is still no government... A government that takes over five months to form is not a government that is going to have very much legitimacy in the end. The country has already collapsed. Now the challenge is figuring out a way to deal with this fact...

"The Country Has Already Collapsed"
Remember Beirut? Welcome to Baghdad
A Government with No Military and No Territory
Studies of the Iraq Disaster: When Democracy Looks Like Civil War
posted by y2karl on Mar 10, 2006 - 127 comments

Left Behind: Bush's Holy War on Nature. Chip Ward enumerates the bizarro-world logic and Orwellian language of current American environmental policy. Even as Katrina's aftermath is focusing attention on links between global warming and more severe hurricanes, and studies of arctic sea-ice suggest that we may be 'past the point of no return' of climate change, the Department of "Justice" seems intent on blaming the flood of New Orleans on environmental groups. This War on Terra may not end in our lifetimes (despite the number of lives it will end...)
posted by dinsdale on Sep 18, 2005 - 33 comments