United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted yesterday that he, President George W. Bush and the rest of the Bush White House had failed to take into account the deep animosities between Iraq’s Sunnis and Shia in their work to establish reconciliation there through a military escalation. “In some ways we probably all underestimated the depth of mistrust and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together,” Gates said.
The sad thing is that progressives have been trying to get the Bush Republicans to pay attention to the severity of the division between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq for years. When the progressives tried to bring the subject into discussions about the future of Iraq, however, the Republicans said that we were just emphasizing the negative too much.
Now, the negative consequences the Republicans’ failure to anticipate the degree of Iraq’s internal divisions have come to pass. The Iraqi government has fallen apart after the departure of disgruntled Sunnis of the Accordance Front from the cabinet.
“The difficulty in coming to grips with those we may all have underestimated six or eight months ago,” Gates says. Think back now to what was happening six to eight months ago… Yes, that’s right, it was the time when the Bush White House came up with its surge plan to escalate the fighting in Iraq.
Now, as the September deadline for evaluation of that plan nears, the Bush White House expects us to believe that their plan has been a success? Tell that to the Accordance Front, and to the remains of the disintegrated Shia government that’s left holding the ball.
(Source: Lebanon Daily Star, August 3, 2007)
