Insurgency to outlast occupation

The Christian Science Monitor suggests the Iraqi insurgency will outlast the American occupation. In short, the American invasion will not have found weapons of mass destruction, will have increased the danger of terrorism, and failed to establish a stable democratic government in Iraq.

Part of the reason for the failure to plan for uncertainties came from the ideological insistence that almost all Iraqis would see Americans as liberators. Yet it also came from a political calculation that dismissed the lessons of the Clinton years. “There was a sense that there was nothing to learn from Somalia or Haiti or Bosnia,” says Dr. Jones.

Americans no longer have a goal in Iraq; all the bloodshed is for naught.

Administration officials have always insisted that events on the ground – and not artificial timelines – would dictate American actions in Iraq. Yet today, the finish line is no more certain than it was two years ago – and the threat that Iraqi forces will be facing when US troops leave is more dire than many military officials imagined.

So it may not be the Cheney’s “last throes” of the insurgency; we can only hope this will be the last gasp for the American ideology of manifest destiny.

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