The faces that we are not seeing are the 1.5 million Iraqi refugees from the war stranded in Syria and Jordan or the 2+ million displaced within Iraq as a result of the sectarian violence.

Most of these 4+ million (12-15% of the Iraqi population) have no home to come home to.

The new Iraq democracy is a good thing, despite the cost in US and Iraqi lives and US $billions. But they still face enormous challenges, mostly political and economic in which the continued large US military occupation cant help.

Its time for the US to get out in an orderly and reasonably short term time frame....according to the wishes of both the Iraqi people and the American people.

And we're beginning to hear of refugees returning home and making a success of things. Things are beginning to look up. Fox News mentioned a restauranteur reopening his place in Adhamiyah, a city formerly an insurgency stronghold and now much pacified. This is not this guy a few years back but another. Exerpt:

From here.

Nobody left Iraq when Saddam was there did they? Oh thats right they and their children were probably murdered if they tried. Whatever.

Most estimates puts Saddam's murders at the 200,000 - 300,000 level...a horrific number.

So are 4 million refugees in a population of 25 million.

I havent seen or heard those stories. Most of the Sunni refugees who fled Baghad have no home or its been taken over by Shiia's.

One serious issue that the government is attempting to cope with is that these refugees represented a large part of the professional working class in Iraq.

Nearly all non-Muslims who lived in relative security under Saddam have fled Iraq for good for for fear of religious backlash and limited rights under the new Constitution.

Baghdad is still a walled and divided city by most accounts.

Gotta admit the four million's chances are a lot better than the three hundred thousand's.

I would guess that depends on whether it becomes a generational issue.

The record or Iraq's neighboring Arab states treatment of other Arab refugees is nothing to brag about.

Ok according to the UNICEF numbers just multiply 60,000 times the 28 years - and you get something like 1.7 million - thats a far cry from 200-300,000.

hell he killed over 100,000 Kurds in the late 80's alone...

Ok...we won. Saddam is dead....a fledgling democracy is in place.

Iraq's challenges ahead are, for the most part, political and economic.

Now lets go home!

The cost to the US has already been more than 4,000 US deaths and $500 billiion (and will be in $trillions for long term vet care for many of the more than 25,000 wounded.)

Remember the principle stated by Project for a New American Century. We must protection **OUR** oil. So much of the US military has now been deposited in Iraq that it will easily take a year to get out. We moved into Iraq to stay - as if we intend to rescue victims of a Hurricane Katrina disaster. It will easily take a year to leave - assuming the civil war does not break out.

It was no accident that a massive (but not majority) of the US military is in Iraq. We moved in to stay permanently as a 1996 PNAC doctrine stated. We moved in to stay permanently despite administration denials. Massive amounts of permantly fixed and very secret equipment must be removed. It will take that much longer to leave.

Interesting article in the Wash Post Today:

The war in Iraq isn't over. The main events may not even have happened yet.

We created the environment for civil war by buddying up and arming both (or more) sides for the political expediency of declaring victory and a very fragile democracy so the PNAC crowd could proclaim "told you so"

Slowly we are seeing indications that we have no idea what will happen once we leave. We know violence diminished when various insurgent groups were ordered to stand down. They still have weapons - and plenty of time to rebuild stockpiles. Do they still have the hatred of their countrymen? "Mission Accomplished" was always a civil war. Within the past year, cities that were once safe have now become 'unstable'. From the NY Times of 23 Jun 2009: We are out because our leadership has grasped reality. It is their country to build or destroy. They had a year to decide what kind of country they want - now that we had enabled so much violence.

We broke it. We owned it. Now we leave it with our legacy. Nobody can predict that legacy with certainty.

I just hope this doesn't cause us to stay longer. As it is, I don't trust that we will be leaving completely anyway, and I think we should.

From reading T.P.M. Barnett's latest book, Great Powers: America and the World After Bush, I don't think we should. He doesn't think we can or should. Take a read of his stuff. He's also got a blog for the week-to-week.

where's the link?

It isn't a link. I just underlined the title. Still like $32.00 at Borders or Barnes & Noble. Here's the blog, though.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

thanks for the blog link

Are you saying you don't think we should stay either? sorry, I'm just a little confused. :)

I said back in '03 or '04 around here that the final victory in Iraq would not be ours, but necessarily must be the Iraqis'. What we should do is to set up the conditions for a victory by the globalizer Iraqis, the democratic Iraqis who got themselves a bellyful of undemocracy under Saddam and his ilk and are now ready to try something else, and something better: a more democratic social order. We should set it up so this victory is in the end inevitable -- at least so far as that may be possible. The thing that makes social science so much less than a science, and social engineering so much less than engineering, is that the fundamental unit of social science is not a molecule, but a self-willed organism. Organisms actively seek their own advantage, and this kind of behavior is what fuzzes up the results in social science. It reduces a socalled science to an art, and we're stuck with that.

And back then, I expected that the timing of our eventual and always-expected departure would be controversial: some would argue too late, others would say too early, more work is needed yet, and almost no one would claim in print (at the time) that it was timed about right.

This Barnett guy seems to offer some pretty cagey ideas for how to pursue this kind of strategy not merely in Araby, but globally -- shrinking the Non-Integrating Gap, as he puts it, nation by nation, increment by increment, developmental stage by developmental stage -- these stages being essentially economic ones, the most earthshaking of which is the rise of a numerous middle class, in places that never had them before. Education of women is another essential, and often catalytic to the required social growth. It is also the one thing our antiglobalist foes oppose most bitterly -- and locally and temporarily, with greatest success.

ahhhh, I see. Thanks UG for that explanation. I actually think I agree with you. (quick! call the press!)

The one comment I will make, is there are certain people who will ALWAYS argue it's too soon, more work is needed, even if it's 20 years later.

This moment is like when the 16 year old son borrows the car for the first time.

You've taught him to drive, lectured him on safety, shown him car crashes, taken him to the ICU to talk with the quadraplegics; now, you hear the rumble of the exhaust down the driveway...
Will he drive sensibly and carefully like you told him? Will he turn into a hoon and wreck everything? Will some idiot smash into him despite everything you have done?

My guess is that the next few months - maybe even a year or so - will stay relatively quiet, as more and more foreign troops slowly leave. But I also guess there are trouble makers just biding their time, and when they judge that enough foreign troops have left, they will start to stir up shit. Mosque bombings, street killings, etc.
Whether that remains under control or descends into civil war and ends up like Lebannon is the question. It depends on so many things - almost all of them to do with the Iraqi people and whether they really support their government, enough to serve in its armies; or whether they become disenchanted with the rulers and apathetically allow extremists to screw things up.

I am not very hopeful. Iraq isn't a "natural state" - three big groups with different ethnicities, religions, and languages, and a history of bad behaviour towards each other. And some juicy oil deposits to keep things interesting. Add in meddling neighbours, and I think the odds are moderately against them. On the plus side, they have got a glimpse of life under religious whackos, and they didn't like it. Most of them will surely understand what civil war will mean for them, I hope.

Wait and see.

I think ultimately it might have been better to divide it up into 3 states for the 3 factions.

I have thought of that, but Bagdad is a huge multi-ethinc mix. It wont divide neatly. Splitting the country would almost certainly lead to awful bloodshed in Bagdad. Also, the oil is not distibuted evenly - some groups wont want to split.

It may end up Balkanising, but the process will be very ugly. But, that may in the long run be the only viable stable solution.

:corn:

kinda like Jerusalem...

The obvious solution is a secular dictatorship. No matter how bad Saddam was, Iraq was more or less stable under it, so that has to be remembered. Though, that obviously is not a preferable solution.

Yeah. Goes without saying. Maybe not without linking to here, but without saying...

There were 0 (zero) hostility-related coalition deaths in Iraq during the month of December.

That is incredible! yay US

That is amazing, all things considered. Probably underreported as well, but still awesome.