Are You Okay With What You've Got?

Sunni militias going on strike, feeling miffed that they're not still getting the love they feel they deserve:

But dozens of phone calls to Sahwa leaders reveal bitterness and anger. "We know the Americans are using us to do their dirty work and kill off the resistance for them and then we get nothing for it," said Abu Abdul-Aziz, the head of the council in Abu Ghraib, where 500 men have already quit.

"The Americans got what they wanted. We purged al-Qaida for them and now people are saying why should we have any more deaths for the Americans. They have given us nothing."

There's no way for the U.S. to build a coherent strategy in Iraq without there being a coherent, genuinely national, Iraqi political movement for us to get behind. In the absence of such a genuinely national movement you can't build from localized successes to national ones and anything you accomplish will eventually be undermined.

Comments

Dammit, you beat me to my headline.

Posted by Spenc/r Ackerm/m | March 21, 2008 2:07 PM

Wait, what?

Posted by How Insane Is John McCain? | March 21, 2008 2:08 PM

So, if they're going on strike, can we go home?

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | March 21, 2008 2:12 PM

I really miss Pretty Girls Make Graves.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | March 21, 2008 2:36 PM

Assuming you get enough of them, what's insufficient about localized successes?

Posted by TW Andrews | March 21, 2008 2:42 PM

Sounds like the Danes want more geld.

Posted by Helter | March 21, 2008 2:49 PM

I am just spitballing here ... but what if we rooted out an Iraqi Obama, maybe someone with a Sunni mother and Shiite father who was married to a Kurd (I have to believe at least 1 person exists, and I have to hope that that person is interested in sacrificing his well-being for the good of Iraq) and institute a covert soft-power operation to get that guy elected at some level. Just a thought.

Posted by Evan | March 21, 2008 3:11 PM

The strikers are all just Ba'athist haters and Sadaamites anyway.

Posted by Peter Driscoll | March 21, 2008 3:34 PM

Matt,

El Cid pointed this out in an earlier thread. He even excerpted the same article at greater length. You might want to make some sort of acknowledgment.

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/president_knownothing.php#comment-1559346

Posted by heedless | March 21, 2008 8:35 PM

This is not news. I've been mentioning this here for weeks now.

Parts of the Sunni insurgency decided they couldn't fight the US, the Shia, and Al Qaeda (once they decided they didn't like Al Qaeda) all at the same time, so they decided to cool it with the US, which offered them $300/month plus a say in the Iraqi government.

The Shia nixed that part, so the Sunnis are pissed.

Nothing has changed. The Sunnis want to get back control of the government, the Shia don't want that to happen. The Kurds want an independent Kurdistan and the oil in Kirkuk, and neither the Sunni nor the Shia (and definitely not the Turkmen in Iraq and the Turks in Turkey) want that to happen. The Sunni, the Shia, and Iran want the US out. The Iraqi government want the US in at least long enough to protect them from being killed. The Iraqi population want the US out. EVERYBODY (except the Iraqi politicians) hates the US.

Nothing has changed. Nothing is getting better. Everything will inevitably get worse.

This isn't rocket science. Iraq is broken and CANNOT be put back together by anyone but the Iraqis - and this will not happen until either one side loses definitively, or an Iraqi nationalist coalition can take power that speaks for Iraqis instead of factions (and even then, it will be a tenuous success which could fail at any moment.)

US presence in Iraq is doing NOTHING to either contain the problem or resolve the problem. It is just prolonging the resolution of the problem, which in all likelihood will have to be resolved by an increased level of violence - or until exhaustion sets in on both sides.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 21, 2008 9:11 PM

Let me see if I can paraphrase Abu Abdul-Aziz.

"The Iraqis got what they wanted. We purged Saddam Husein for them and now people are saying why should we have any more deaths for the Iraqis. They have given us nothing."

Yeah, I think that's what he's saying.

Posted by Stillman | March 22, 2008 5:18 PM