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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 26-Aug-2010
26-Aug-10 News -- Suicide bombers blanket Iraq as Americans leave

Web Log - August, 2010

26-Aug-10 News -- Suicide bombers blanket Iraq as Americans leave

World grain prices rise by up to 20% last week

Suicide bombers blanket Iraq as American combat troops leave

Suicide bombers struck 13 cities all across Iraq from top to bottom on Wednesday, killing at least 56, with hundreds wounded, according to the Independent.

The attack came a day after the US withdrew all of its combat troops from Iraq.

The bombings are thought to have been perpetrated by al-Qaeda in Iraq, to prove that they're still a power in the country.

Kenneth M. Pollack of the Brookings Institution has written an article for the Washington Post called "Five myths about the Iraq troop withdrawal." This provides a good summary of what's going on in Iraq.

"Myth # 1. As of this month, the United States no longer has combat troops in Iraq.

Not even close. Roughly 50,000 American military personnel remain in Iraq, and the majority are still combat troops -- they're just named something else. The major units still in Iraq will no longer be called "brigade combat teams" and instead will be called "advisory and assistance brigades." But a rose by any other name is still a rose, and the differences in brigade structure and personnel are minimal."

The apparent intent of Wednesday's al-Qaeda bombings is to make it politically impossible for America to continue withdrawing from Iraq.

"Myth # 2. Thanks to the troop "surge," Iraq is secure enough that it will not fall back into civil war as U.S. forces pull out.

Security in Iraq has improved enormously since the darkest days of 2005-2006, but the jury is still out on what will happen in the months and years ahead.

Extensive research on intercommunal civil wars -- that is, civil wars that, like Iraq's, were caused by a breakdown in governance that prompted different communities to fight one another for power-- finds a dangerous propensity toward recidivism. Moreover, the fear, anger, greed and desire for revenge that helped propel Iraq into civil war in the first place remain just beneath the surface.

Academic studies of scores of civil wars from the past century show that roughly 50 percent of the time, war will recur within five years of a cease-fire. If the country has major "lootable" resources such as gold, diamonds or oil, the odds climb higher still. The important bright spot, however, is that if a great power is willing to make a long-term commitment to serving as peacekeeper and mediator (the role the United States is playing in Iraq today), the recidivism rate drops to less than one in three. This is why an ongoing American commitment to Iraq is so important.

It's also worth pointing out that a civil war doesn't recur because the public desires one. Most average people recognize that civil war is a disaster. Instead, such wars flare up again and drag on because leaders still believe they can achieve their objectives by force. Until they are convinced otherwise -- ideally, by a great power's military forces -- they will revert to fighting."

This is total nonsense when applied to Iraq. As I wrote repeatedly, starting in 2003, a civil war is impossible in Iraq at this time, because Iraq is in a generational Awakening era. What happened in 2006-7 was a daily series of suicide bombings mostly perpetrated or incited by foreign fighters imported into Iraq by al-Qaeda in Iraq. There were no large groups of Sunnis and Shias fighting each other on a battlefield. There were neighborhood gunfights between Sunnis and Shias, but that's not a war, any more than Al Capone launched a civil war in the 1930s.

I wrote about what was really going on in Iraq in my April, 2007, article, "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq," which I still believe was the best analytical article about the war in Iraq written anywhere at that time.

There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that Iraq will have a civil war if American troops withdraw. Pollack's analysis is completely wrong.

"Myth # 3. The United States is leaving behind a broken political system.

If some on the right want to claim (wrongly) that the surge stabilized Iraq to the point that civil war is impossible, their counterparts on the left try to insist (equally incorrectly) that the change in U.S. tactics and strategy in 2007-2008 had no impact on Iraq's politics whatsoever."

This paragraph is so garbled that it's hard to even know what it means. However, I'll return to the "broken political system" point later.

"Myth # 4. Iraqis want U.S. troops to stay. Or they want them leave.

Be very, very careful with Iraqi public opinion. Polls are rarely subtle enough to capture the complexity of Iraqi views. Typically, they show a small number of Iraqis who want the Americans out immediately at any cost, a small number who want them to stay forever and a vast majority in the middle -- determined that U.S. troops should leave, but only after a certain period of time. When Iraqis are asked how long they believe our troops are needed, their answers range from a few months to a few years, but are strongly linked with however long the respondent believes it will take Iraq's forces to be able to handle security on their own."

This is true. The Iraqis really don't know what they want. They're in a generational Awakening era, so all they really want to do is argue with each other.

"Myth # 5. The war will end "on schedule."

Much as we should all want the Obama administration to succeed in Iraq, this statement by the president in a speech to veterans this month should also make us wary. If uttered in the first act of a Greek tragedy, it is exactly the kind of claim that would end in a Sophoclean fall."

Well, there isn't a war going on, so it's hard to know what to make of Obama's claim that the war will end on schedule. However, it's certain that the roadside bombs and suicide bombings won't stop on any sort of schedule. In that sense, the war will never end.

I'd now like to return to the question of whether Iraq has a "broken political system."

One way to understand what's happening in Iraq today is to look at what happened in Iraq in the decades following Iraq's previous crisis war, the Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920. In my April 2007 article, I quoted some of the Library of Congress history of Iraq. What's amazing is that today "groken political system" is very similar to the one of the 1930s. Here are some excerpts:

"On October 13, 1932, Iraq became a sovereign state, and it was admitted to the League of Nations. Iraq still was beset by a complex web of social, economic, ethnic, religious, and ideological conflicts, all of which retarded the process of state formation. The declaration of statehood and the imposition of fixed boundaries triggered an intense competition for power in the new entity. Sunnis and Shias, cities and tribes, shaykhs and tribesmen, Assyrians and Kurds, pan-Arabists and Iraqi nationalists--all fought vigorously for places in the emerging state structure. Ultimately, lacking legitimacy and unable to establish deep roots, the British-imposed political system was overwhelmed by these conflicting demands."

Today, it's the "American-imposed political system" being overwhelmed by these conflicting demands. Eventually, by the 1960s, the political system was so chaotic, that it took a torturing dictator like Saddam Hussein to prevent a complete collapse of the government.

So call Iraq's political system "broken," if you wish, but it's perfectly normal for Iraq at this time on its generational timeline, and it makes no difference whether Americans are there or not.

I've always expected that American troops would have to remain in Iraq until they were forced to withdraw by the Clash of Civilizations world war. The real question is whether al-Qaeda will make it politically impossible for America to withdraw completely from Iraq.

More bad economic news: New home sales, durable goods, Ireland downgrade

The bad news keeps pouring in, as the deflationary spiral really begins to take hold.

The S&P ratings service downgraded Ireland's debt a notch, pushing the country further into a vicious debt spiral. Recall that Ireland is one of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Greece and Spain) that are deepest in debt, and a risk to the euro currency. The debt downgrade will force Ireland to pay significantly higher interest rates, according to the Irish Times, making it harder for the country to pay off its debt in the future. According to the article, the S&P rating of Ireland is now at its lowest level since 1995, but remains higher than six of the other 16 euro area countries, including Italy, Portugal and Greece.

After Tuesday's report that existing home sales plunged 27% in July, more than twice as much as analysts had expected, a new report on Wednesday indicates that sales of new homes in July sank 12.4%. According to the LA Times, this was the lowest point since government records starting being kept in 1963. The July sales rate marked a 32.4% drop from the same month a year ago, and things were already pretty depressed a year ago.

Durable goods orders rose 0.3%, far lower than the 3.0% expected by analysts. Furthermore, the overall increase was driven by a 75.9% increase in orders for commercial airplanes, according to Associated Press. Outside of the transportation sector, orders dropped 3.8%. The country had expected a "V-shaped recovery" by now, and businesses had been ordering manufactured goods to build up stocks in preparation for the recovery. Now that the recovery hasn't come, business are done restocking, cooling demand for factory orders.

As I've been saying, the economy started spiraling downward in May, as the bailout and stimulus programs in America, China and Europe have run out of gas, and as the Law of Diminishing Returns kept them from having any further effects anyway.

Additional links

Worldwide prices on wheat, barley and other grains has been skyrocketing as much as 20% in the last week. According to this article, the fault lies with commodities speculators. Spiegel

German firm Hypo Real Estate, which was seized by the German government in 2009, has foreclosed on Snowmass Village, a huge $1-billion resort in Aspen, Colorado, in a spectacular real estate failure. Foreign banks held $35 billion of U.S. commercial real estate loans as of last month, and more than $15 billion is classified as troubled, meaning delinquent, defaulted, foreclosed or in bankruptcy, up from $10 billion a year ago. Bloomberg

A venomous speech by Hamas' Damascus-based political leader Khaled Meshaal on Tuesday, directed at Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, has made the breach between Hamas and Fatah final and irrevocable. Hamas is planning large-scale terror attacks Israeli and Palestinian West Bank targets, according to Debka, which has contacts within Israeli intelligence, but sometimes gets things wrong.

Former president Jimmy Carter arrived in North Korea on Wednesday, intending to return to America with North Korean prisoner American Aijalon Mahli Gomes. Some analysts are wondering whether the unpredictable Jimmy Carter will attempt to negotiate nuclear policy, against the desires of the Obama administration. Former President Bill Clinton went on a similar mission last year and freed two prisones, but no policy changes resulted from it. CS Monitor

South Korean government officials believe that North Korean president Kim Jong-il is visiting China. His son, Kim Jong-un, who is the heir-apparent to the presidency, is accompanying the president. Chosun

The European Parliament will open in September with a debate on xenophobic acts by France, Belgium and Italy, in expelling Roma (Gypsies). EurActiv

An unnamed U.S. official says that the Taliban plans to conduct attacks against foreigners, including Americans, who are participating in the ongoing flood relief operations in Pakistan. BBC

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Aug-10 News -- Suicide bombers blanket Iraq as Americans leave thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (26-Aug-2010) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 26-Aug-2010 26-Aug-10 News -- Suicide bombers blanket Iraq as Americans leave

Suicide bombers blanket Iraq as American combat troops leave

More bad economic news: New home sales, durable goods, Ireland downgrade

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 26-Aug-2010
26-Aug-10 News -- Suicide bombers blanket Iraq as Americans leave