The US withdrawal may solve a lot of problems inside Iraq, particularly the whole “being occupied by a foreign power” thing. But all will not be solved in Iraq on January 1, as the nation’s sectarian and ethnic tensions remain nationwide, and would still break out into new violence at any time.
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Author: Jason Ditz
Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.
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Talk about openning the gates of Hell!
“Thank god we are getting rid of the Americans. Everybody wants them out. Iraq has hosted many occupiers, and all of them have left. We have cemeteries for the Englishmen and the Turks. The Americans left no cemeteries. They will be easy to forget.” – quoted from the article referenced above
Easy to forget – until they look around and see that a modern, functioning society has been pushed back into the19th century. And therein lies the real problem for the Americans: a generation or maybe even 2 that will want to exact retribution on those who took so much from them. And the Americans will pontificate and wonder, as many are doing right now, how ungrateful the Iraqis are for all we've done to them.
Who was responsible for the mess? We were.