Juan Cole: The Third Year in Iraq

Juan Cole of Informed Comment lists what he considers the ten ten catastrophes of the third year of war in Iraq. But first he gives us a quick summary of the catastrophes in the beginning:

The American war against Iraq began on March 20, 2003, so today is the third anniversary. The Himalyan mistakes of the American administration of the country in its first two years have by now been much analyzed -- the punitive steps against even low-level Baath Party members, the firing of tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs, the dissolution of the army, the permitting of looting on a vast scale, the failure to understand tribal honor, the failure to get a handle on the early guerrilla war, the failure to understand Shiite Islam, the torture at Abu Ghraib, the failure to get services on line, the destruction of Fallujah, the ill-timed and ill-advised attempt to "kill or capture" Muqtada al-Sadr, the adoption of an election system that allowed the almost complete exclusion of the Sunni Arabs, etc., etc.

Probably the biggest catastrophe on Cole's list is number 5:

5. All three Sunni Arab-majority provinces rejected the new constitution by a sound margin, two of them by a two-thirds majority. The Kurdish and Shiite provinces overwhelmingly approved the charter. Iraq thus has a permanent constitution that is absolutely unacceptable to the country's most powerful minority.

The Sunnis, who are the best financed, and have the most weapons and the best military training have not been made a part of the new government in any significant way and therefore will be difficult to bring in from the cold. But number 5 stems from debaathification and the firing of the military in the first months of occupation. There were many opportunities to undo the damage but Bush never did.

To me, the biggest catastrophe in the third year is that Bush didn't use his reelection in 2004 to start fresh in 2005 by firing Rumsfeld and bringing in a fresh team with fresh ideas for seriously dealing with Iraq and taking Iraq completely off the political table. Bush should also have reduced Cheney's portfolio which he could have done by reducing Cheney's staff in half and reducing the access and authority of the remaining staffers. It's a little ridiculous that Bush has allowed three CEOs to operate in Washington: himself, Cheney and Rumsfeld.