I just heard the mosque death toll is up to 79.

Sadly, I can't think of a worthy expletive.

'Aqoul, do you think this is Sunni versus Shi'ia or Sadr versus Sistani?

Can you actually point to anyone who has stated that "there is no realistic possibility of a civil war in Iraq"? I know there are a lot of people who would say that it isn't in a civil war and don't think that it will be, but I have never encountered anyone who said in all seriousness that it wasn't within the realm of realistic possibilities.

Obviously it's not a direct quote, but I'm sure there are mush-heads around who think this way. Matthew's note rather effectively demonstrates the delusional thinking in some circles. Case in point:

Bush denies Iraq is in civil war (BBC, Mar 21)

Jinni: Not sure how likely it is that Sadr would settle a rivalry with Sistani by blowing up Shia shrines.

i don't know...that is why i am asking you. ;)
recall when Sadr held the shrine of the Imam hostage and Sistani freed it with his 10,000 muslim march. there was speculation that Sadr ight try to destroy the mosque and blame it on the coalition.

Sadr's website is very pious...and very Iranian.

dear mk,

as i said somewhere else today:

there are no "objective" yardsticks for things like "civil war". i don't use the term. maybe it is one, maybe it isn't. doesn't really make a diff. i mean, it's not like you're entitled to u.n. benefits if your country qualifies for "civil war" status. there IS an insurgency. there IS sectarian violence. if you call it "civil war" or not ... why is that important again?

as for the "do you think this is Sunni versus Shi'ia or Sadr versus Sistani?" -- it's tough to answer. there IS sunni vs. shi'i sectarian violence and there IS sadr vs. other shi'i, just like there is "other shi'i (1) vs. other shi'i (2)" and various sunni groups vying for all sorts of power.

the best chronicler of iraqi affairs is still juan cole (www.juancole.com).

--raf*

and, pardon, another question. i saw syriana and understood very well the motivation of the young paki suicide bomber.

but what could possibly be the motivation for three muslims to kill 79 other muslims at prayer?
it is heartbreaking.

but what could possibly be the motivation for three muslims to kill 79 other muslims at prayer?

Because if you're an extremist whackjob Sunni, Shia are apostates and need to die. Zarqawi logic.

Or perhaps there is a more "practical" motivation. Hard to judge with the limited info available.

*raf --

"if you call it "civil war" or not ... why is that important again?"

Aside from the reunion and reenactment rights, the focus is on the fact that those insisting it ain't so are not only trying to put their own heads in the sand but others as well. Further, many represent a viewpoint that deserves a derisive kick in the head for bringing it to this point.

Like this NY Post blither:

March 5, 2006 -- BAGHDAD. I'M trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it. Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills.

Shit like that.

The fact of civil war also means that a line has been crossed, as opposed to sectarian violence, in which something decisive will happen or have to happen, when exactly is hard to tell, but at some point the USA will have to either bring in troops in large numbers and fight a ruthless war of suppression, or they will have to stand down/aside and let it fly. This can be delayed, like an irrational financial market dragging on for years, but the genie looks like it's out of the bag, or the cat is out of the bottle, or something.

And all this was forseeable and preventable. And most articulately and informedly by our very own intellectual berserker, the Lounsbury.

Matt McM --

Pedantically you are right, I meant more like the NY Post column I linked to here, those who say nothing like that isn't possibly happening.

more information, eerie.

the preacher in this mosque is Jalal Addin al-Sagheer, a cleric from the SCIRI who was the first SCIRI member to publicly urge Ibrahim al-Jafari to withdraw his nomination for office.

Case in point: Bush denies Iraq is in civil war (BBC, Mar 21)

I think it's funny that, read as a response to the OP, this can imply Bush is a moonbat.

And all this was forseeable and preventable. And most articulately and informedly by our very own intellectual berserker, the Lounsbury.

Granted that the events were forseeable in equal measure to select contingents among region specialists and partisan doomsayers, it is less clear to me to what degree all of it was preventable. That is, except by the Lounsbury and whatever higher power told Bush Jr. to invade Iraq. . . Cheney, I guess.

Those who do not read Unqualified Offerings are destined to rewrite it, poorly.

Nonsense, I read Unqualified Offerings and reqrite it very poorly.

reqrite = rewrite

. . . proving my point

Speaking of Unqualified Offerings, this generic blog entry is everything we experience here, without specifics.

Re the Q: " it is less clear to me to what degree all of it was preventable"

Which parts? I have seperate views on the different stages.

I should note that the real question now is what stages of civil war will Iraq go through.

I'll take a shot on the preventability: I think that there were several stages when at the very least the attempts to prevent the kind of disintegration that has in fact happens could have been made: at the early stages, in particular, by spreading a hell of a lot of money around in the form of massive public-works projects instead of waiting to ask for the approval until well after the invasion had taken place: a serious administration would have asked for the big Iraq rebuilding budget BEFORE THE FRIGGING INVASION, not months afterward. The dissolution of the Iraqi Army is another step a lot of people point at, although I'm not 100% sure that keeping it intact wouldn't have just been a different route towards disaster. It would have been nice to have had more troops available to keep the peace immediately after the invasion, although the 500,000 Shinseki recommended were about 300,000 more than could conceivably have been available. Aggressively turning over sovereignty to some sort of UN mission EARLY (as opposed to late, and begrudgingly, as actually happened) might have yielded more international troops from eg. Pakistan, which might have helped to keep the security situation from spiraling out of control.

It's really hard to say if any of these steps would have prevented civil war, or just put it off for a year or two as the logic worked itself out despite competent attempts to defuse it.

Preventability discussions are usually dominated by reciprocal point-scoring and good analyses are very hard to come across. I'm actually not sure what they're good for in the public domain, except to distract from the current gloom, but I find them interesting. Which is not to say I have enough knowledge about the relevant subjects to not be better off keeping my mouth shut... but anyway.

spreading a hell of a lot of money around in the form of massive public-works projects instead of waiting to ask for the approval until well after the invasion had taken place: a serious administration would have asked for the big Iraq rebuilding budget BEFORE THE FRIGGING INVASION

I wasn't familiar with Lounsbury's blog while he was there, unfortunately, but I randomly fished out some great posts awhile ago. Looks like there were some clear structural problems with managerial engineering, or whatever it's called. Not my area of expertise. More to the point, it would be interesting for someone who has the knowledge to run this scenario in their head to say how feasible it was to get the ball rolling earlier from a political standpoint.

There was another issue with the ditched State Department plan. I think you guys even had a link to it on the sidebar.

The dissolution of the Iraqi Army is another step a lot of people point at, although I'm not 100% sure that keeping it intact wouldn't have just been a different route towards disaster.

I am far less than 100% sure about that. I really can't tell if there is an actual consensus about that in any analytical community, or if writing that there is one is some sort of a tick that journalists have developed.

Aggressively turning over sovereignty to some sort of UN mission EARLY (as opposed to late, and begrudgingly, as actually happened) might have yielded more international troops from eg. Pakistan, which might have helped to keep the security situation from spiraling out of control.

This I would tentatively disagree with. The kind of elements who blew up the UN compound and killed Arab diplomats would have probably gone after Pakistani troops. UN peace-keeping missions are more brittle under attack, both militarily and in the reduced sense of responsibility from all parties. That scenario actually seems more reminiscent of Lebanon.

I was also impressed by Larry Wilkerson's diatribe about the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal. If he was full of shit, I couldn't tell, but I find his overall way of talking about the issues compelling. Meaning that if I were in that line of work, I would have probably thought about things in similar terms.

Michael:

Point of order, I was largely "in the near environs" during the heat of things, as expat financiers are expensive to get blown up. Merely noting for the record.

As to this note: Looks like there were some clear structural problems with managerial engineering, or whatever it's called.

Lots of issues with respect to management. In the period that I was most involved in (roughly May 2003 through April 2004), the issues were very much tied to utterly unrealistic sr. management expectations / goals and lack of awareness / attention to key operational issues. See my raving about contracts and securitisation.

Not my area of expertise. More to the point, it would be interesting for someone who has the knowledge to run this scenario in their head to say how feasible it was to get the ball rolling earlier from a political standpoint.

It strikes me that there was no reason for the early reconstruction efforts to be quite so ludicrously misplaced. Mind you I do not believe the big engineering groups such as Parsons and Halliburton that US DoD brought in were maliciously doing a bad job - quite the contrary - however the master plan was off in la-la land. CPA-Iraq leadership liked to talk about an almost magical transformation of Iraq into some mini-entreprenurial America (the sort of idiotic lip flapping that useless droolingly ignorant Lefty cunt Naomi Wolf actually took seriously in her idiotic article), but had zero idea as to what they were working with in reality.

There was another issue with the ditched State Department plan. I think you guys even had a link to it on the sidebar.

Yes, I have never actually read it, but regardless to someone with regional experience and private sector experience, much was painfully obvious.

The utter disaster of those months, in my opinion, was utterly unnecessary. If CPA-Iraq had been staffed with professionals and not American Bolshy Party Political Loons (e.g. Dan Senor) and kids, the effort might have had a chance to get some momentum.

Achieve what they were taking about? Never, but forget that as marketing, kickstarting the economy was possible. Was. Now, of course, it's fucked into a cocked hat and nothing this side of the civil war will see it undone.

Re the political end, an aggressive effort to give the CPA-Iraq a more international face and feel for PR purposes, and a whole slew of fairly low-cost but often good return diplomacy throwing some bones out to Europeans, Turks etc. would certainly have helped the dynamic a bit.

Would this have stopped the Lebanese logic from emerging?

I don't know in the end. I am sure that, however, an effort with a modicum of competence would have put a CPA-Iraq and Iraqi government in a far, far stronger position c. 2006 than is currently the case.

I hold that against the Bush Administration, and any right thinking rational human being should. The lot of the Sr. decision makers were grossly incompetent.

Added note: I would suggest that those retrospective arguments focused on the non-inevitability of the current situation in terms of the socio-economic dynamic are most useful. There are lessons - as my almost non-existent commentary on Iraq now suggests, I am simply tired of the partisan yammering in the US blogosphere, the only point I keep retaining is I blame the Right Bolshies for enabling the idiocy (and some continue to try for reasons that escape me).

Damn, I almost feel nostalgic for Dan Senor's briefings. The man who actually said "we are listening to the silent majority".

about the iraqi army, i'm not sure it was a bad idea to dissolve it either. but what strikes me as so bizarre, is that the CPA never even tried to make it an ordered demobilization, collect guns, guard storages, take top officers' applications for a new army, preserve whatever was worth preserving, etc, even to the limited extent that that would have been possible.

rather, they just decreed that everybody could fuck off overnight, and that was that. small wonder that the insurgency profited in manpower, weaponry and officer corps outrage.