Au Revoir, Iraq! We Knew Ye Naught

"Today, I'm pleased to report that - thanks to the extraordinary service of our troops and civilians in Iraq - our combat mission will end this month, and we will complete a substantial drawdown of our troops." U.S. President Barack Obama

Election pledges have a habit of coming back to haunt the candidate who inspires voters to believe that whatever is uppermost in their minds at any given time about the country's failings will be solved once the candidate is elected. From those seeking election to municipal council to those gambling that they have the inspirational ability to solve a nation's problems and by extension, given the nation, many of the problems haunting the international community, this is a situation that plagues and will not readily be resolved.

Mostly because what seems feasible at a remote, when the candidate is not yet responsible for decision-making - nor does he have knowledge of the complexities of the situation being considered, nor would he, at that juncture, be held responsible for rushing to judgement - he feels justified in nobly promising whatever the electorate strains toward. But then comes the day of judgement, when he is responsible and he is urged to make good on his promise, and so he does.

A former president injudiciously and without solutions aforethought to the chaos that would be unleashed by invading a sovereign country, is able to sit back at leisure and complacently view his successor attempting to draw both countries, the invader and the invaded, out of an untenable position. The sitting president has the unenviable job of making decisions that no one will compliment him for, because by that juncture the anarchic result of the original decision presents as unsolvable.

Iraq was put on notice that it will have to fend for its own future. The United States is weary and played out in that particular arena. Too much of the country's treasury has been dedicated to a war that appears to have solved nothing. In the removal of a murderous tyrant who, through an iron grip on his country's helm in the lavish use of intimidation, fear, and violation of human rights, a tsunami of tribal and religious hatred was unleashed. Nothing has yet succeeded in stuffing that genie back into its vaporous container.

Operation New Dawn, which the Iraqis could hardly wait for, to have their country to themselves once again, and to wave goodbye to foreign troops is in premature progression. Operation Iraqi Freedom leaves something to be desired in its completion, and that something is hope and security, both shattered time and again, and more latterly in real doubt with increasing terrorist attacks. Bad enough the sectarian hatred that caused the country to leap toward civil war.

At this juncture, President Obama must look toward re-election in 2012; with a promise not fulfilled his prospects become dimmed, given all the other seemingly intractable problems, both domestic and international laid at his feet, potentially electorally fatal. America has lost too many of its sons and daughters. American troops are set to leave; 50,000 will remain in an advisory capacity for the time being, leading up to a later withdrawal.

Lieutenant-General Babakir Zebart, Iraq's military commander's angst over imminent U.S. troop withdrawal is unfortunate, and perhaps unanticipated, but not entirely. He knows, and the U.S. military knows that Iraq's national armed forces are not fully prepared to face the extent of the resistance from a far greater number of determined fanatics imported into the country than had been formally acknowledged.

"It would have been better for the Americans to wait until the Iraqi army and police complete their training and become a truly loyal force." "It was after the Americans withdrew from our cities that the attacks began again." True. Also true that the country, post-election results that saw leading factions claiming victory, is still without a reliable, functioning government. Which at its best was riven with rivalries and competing interests. And now is fundamentally absent.

No government to order the country, to ensure that an agenda to move forward beyond the traditional antipathies between Sunni and Shia, and the country's Kurds, leaves the population and the future in a state of drift. Where Saddam Hussein was able to contain the population's restiveness with his Baathist-controlled military maintaining internal problems in a state of balance, a shared new 'democratic' parliament finds itself at odds with itself.

The Sunni minority once ruled and now the dominant Shia do. And the Kurds, who suffered Saddam's wrath disproportionately, also are not finding themselves in the secure place they feel deserving of. At one time it appeared that the country would dissolve into a state of civil war, with the country liable to be divided into three. The Sunni warlords were persuaded to turn against the foreign Sunni brigades of al-Qaeda in Iraq and for a time matters improved.

That time too is now history, with the Sunni minority back in a position of resentful subservience to the Shia majority. And a re-alignment and restructuring and resurgence in the ranks of the terror groups. And this is where the United States has concluded it has invested enough of itself in the effort to bring rationality, reason and co-operation to a heritage that defies its understanding. The insurgents are patient, aside from the occasional rash outbreak.

Targeting the country's judges, traffic police, senior civil servants and security forces. Able to somehow make their way past assured security lines to attack where they will. If they are somewhat cautious now, thanks to the presence of the U.S. troops, where will that caution evaporate to when the troops leave? Well, the Obama administration sees a glimmer of a solution. While Hamid Karzai is booting private security units out of Afghanistan, the U.S. will be ushering them back into Iraq.

The State Department is doubling its private security guards. Mostly to defend its own remaining installations and fortified compounds, for their presence will remain for the while. And private security militias will be invested with the authority to operate radar systems, forewarning of rocket attacks, to search for the presence of roadside bombs, to fly reconnaissance drones and staff quick-reaction forces when civilian areas are threatened.

The White House expressed its confidence in this brave new idea of conscripting an non-state army of trained military personnel to fill the breach that will be opened by the loss of U.S. troops. To help fulfill the U.S. mission of helping Iraq to find the stability it requires to prosper. The problem is with the destabilization that set in with the ouster of one group and the installation of another, ancient rivalries and hatreds have not diminished.

This is, after all, the Middle East, where honour, tribal warfare and blood-letting has always existed and it showed little sign of diminishing to the point of the geography finally entering the 20th Century to leave the 7th behind on its way to the 21st Century.