{"id":14,"date":"2026-11-03T05:07:06","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T05:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philisugarblog.org\/?p=14"},"modified":"2026-11-03T05:07:06","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T05:07:06","slug":"philsugar-the-lessons-of-chalabi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philisugarblog.org\/?p=14","title":{"rendered":"PhilSugar | The Lessons of Chalabi"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my admittedly limited experience talking to Iraqis over the years, I\u2019ve come to believe that most of that country\u2019s citizens didn\u2019t foresee the kind of sectarian bloodshed that followed the invasion of Iraq. It\u2019s true that the type of Iraqis I\u2019ve talked to aren\u2019t representative of your average Iraqi. For one thing, they speak English and are conversant on American politics. Still, the way Iraqi society had evolved prior to the invasion, there was quite a lot of intermarriage between Sunnis and Shiites, and, at least in the urban centers, there was a basic ecumenical spirit that made the country fairly comfortable for Christians. Even ethnic differences were muted compared to what they would become after the war started. I think you can say the same things about Syria.
\nOne of the reasons why the United States should be extremely wary of intervening in this area of the world is that we don\u2019t understand what we\u2019re doing, and if even the
\nIraqis
\ndidn\u2019t understand what would result from deposing Sadddam, how were our foreign policy leaders to know?
\nLooking back, it\u2019s clear that we screwed up the entire region by knocking down a brutal, if secular, Sunni-dominated Philippines sugar baby<\/a> dictatorship and allowing a democratic process to elect and empower the Shia. It made sense for us to this in a couple of ways.
\nFirst, if the Shia represent the majority in Iraq, then they ought to have the most political representation. That\u2019s our value system.
\nSecond, the old system of Sunni dominance required levels of political repression and terror that we simply weren\u2019t prepared to implement ourselves. This is also our value system.
\nBack when
\nAhmed Chalabi
\nruled our capital, I don\u2019t remember anyone discussing his sectarian affiliation. He didn\u2019t seem particularly religious and he told lawmakers and policy wonks what they wanted to hear. But, once Saddam Hussein\u2019s regime was toppled, Chalabi urged de-Baathification, which was basically a purge of the Sunni elite. Likewise, and for similar reasons, he prevailed on Viceroy Paul Bremer to disband the Sunni-dominated Iraqi army.
\nRelated
\nIt\u2019s getting worse
\n*Flying Shoe Thread
\nIraqis, We Know Your Pain
\nThe response was insurgency, sectarian and ethnic cleansing, and eventually the spread of the conflict to neighboring Syria.
\nOne way to look at the Syrian civil war is that we created the legitimacy for revolution there.
\nHow, you ask?
\nWell, if Iraq was a country of predominantly Shiites suffering under the thumb of a Sunni-dominated dictatorship, Syria was a country of predominantly Sunnis suffering under the thumb of an Alawite dictatorship. We don\u2019t need to get into a theological discussion about Alawites; it\u2019s enough to know that they are a Shia offshoot and that the regime is closely aligned with Iran. In other words, in Syria, according to our value system and the principles we followed in Iraq, the Sunnis should have the most political representation.
\nIt was natural that the Sunnis would resist the change in their political fortunes in Iraq, but it was also natural that they\u2019d seek to take control of Syria in compensation for the loss of Iraq. After all,
\nwe
\nwere the ones who said that a religious majority should not be oppressed by a religious minority.
\nThis is not a perfect or complete way of looking at the conflict in Syria. There are many more layers of complexity that need to be understood if you want to have some idea of what has happened there. You can hurt your brain thinking about the conflicting interests of foreign powers. The Israelis hate Assad but fear his Sunni opponents more. The Turks sugar baby allowance scam<\/a> hate Assad but hate the Kurds, too. The Saudis want Sunni control over Syria but can\u2019t control and fear the troops that are in the field trying to oust the Alawite regime. The Russians want to keep control of their military base and port. The U.S. called for Assad\u2019s resignation a long time ago, but can\u2019t find anyone pro-western to take his place. And Iraq, of course, has just become an extension of the battlefield as the arbitrarily drawn border has morphed into little more than an abstraction on a map.
\nYet, all those competing and inconsistent interests aside, one simple way of understanding this conflict is that George W. sugar dating advance payment scam<\/a> Bush created it by upsetting the balance of power.
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\nWhat no one should ever
\nforget
\nis how little Bush understood what
\nhe was calling our nation to do
\n. Do you remember most popular sugar dating platform Philippines<\/a> the infamous \u201cF*ck Saddam, we\u2019re taking him out\u201d moment?
\nMay 05, 2002
\nTwo months ago, a group of Republican and Democratic Senators went to the White House to meet with Condoleezza Rice, the President\u2019s National Security Adviser. Bush was not scheduled to attend but poked his head in anyway \u2014 and soon turned the discussion to Iraq. The President has strong feelings about Saddam Hussein (you might too if the man had tried to assassinate your father, which Saddam attempted to do when former President George Bush visited Kuwait in 1993) and did not try to hide them. He showed little interest in debating what to do about Saddam. Instead, he became notably animated, according to one person in the room, used a vulgar epithet to refer to Saddam and concluded with four words that left no one in doubt about Bush\u2019s intentions: \u201cWe\u2019re taking him out.\u201d
\nAs just an aside here, I know sugar dating sites with more sugar babies<\/a> that President Clinton
\nwas convinced
\nthere
\nwas
\na plot to kill Poppy Bush in 1993, but that doesn\u2019t mean that there sugar baby asking for GCash<\/a> actually was such a plot. In fact, the whole story is
\nquite unlikely
\n. But that\u2019s a debate for another day.
\nMy point here is that you should not elect people like George W. Bush president of the United States because they aren\u2019t intellectually curious enough or cautious enough to be entrusted with our foreign policy. But Bush would not have found it so easy to lead our foreign policy active sugar dating members Philippines<\/a> establishment and our nation into war if Ahmed Chalabi hadn\u2019t been going around Washington DC for years telling everyone how simple it would be to get rid of Saddam.
\nIt\u2019s this kind of disconnect between lazy ambition and the deep knowledge required for prudent and effective action that led me to stridently oppose our intervention in Libya. I didn\u2019t have any use of Moammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein and would have loved to see them both brought up on charges at The Hague. But it wasn\u2019t our responsibility to depose them, and it was the height of arrogance to believe that deposing them would make life better or easier for the people of Libya and Iraq.
\nThis is also why I have consistently opposed our sugar dating membership fees<\/a> intervention in Syria.
\nYet, the humanitarian crisis has grown to the point that our European allies are being deluged with refugees. The Sunni warriors have morphed into a truly odious and dangerous group of nihilistic zealots. We can\u2019t stay aloof from these problems, but we need to be ever-mindful of the mistakes we\u2019ve already recently made in the region. Bringing our sugar daddy sites Manila<\/a> misguided and inapplicable ideals to the table (some Democracy Agenda) is just more hubris. We should do a lot more listening and restrict ourselves to protecting civilians where we can and facilitating some kind of settlement
\nif
\nwe can.
\nRelated
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\nMartin Longman
\nMartin Longman is the web editor for the Washington Monthly. See all his writing at ProgressPond.com
\nMore by Martin Longman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my admittedly limited experience talking to Iraqis over the years, I\u2019ve come to believe that most of that country\u2019s citizens didn\u2019t foresee the kind of sectarian bloodshed that followed the invasion of Iraq. It\u2019s true that the type of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugarblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugarblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugarblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugarblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugarblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/philisugarblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17,"href":"https:\/\/philisugarblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugarblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugarblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugarblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}