Claims of an improved security situation in Iraq will ring more obviously hollow after “three US service personnel have been killed and 31 wounded by rocket attacks on the Green Zone and a base elsewhere in Baghdad.” Earlier today, an email from the imperialist and therefore misnamed U.S. Institute for Peace acknowledged that the security situation had only improved to “2005 levels.” I have previously passed along stories in this space illustrating how the apparent drop in violence followed an “ethnic cleansing” as Iraq was de facto divided into three countries. And I’ve seen other articles questioning the defensibility of the Green Zone.
Yet none of our major presidential candidates advocates a withdrawal now. Again and again I hear Iraqis saying that they can solve their own problems when the United States leaves. We cannot solve their problems for them. But empire is a hard habit to break, and both political parties are committed to it.