Aksariya Mosque bombing pushes Iraq toward civil war

[mburbank]

"My plan is to side with the government that was elected in Iraq. My plan would be to encourage the rule of law over the rule of the militia. My plan would be to treat this is a crime rather than a civil war, and work with Iraqi police forces to try to A. calm the reprisals, and B. search for and arrest the "insurgents" doing these things. "
-Kevin

See? Was that such a terribly hard question to answer? I hope you have as detailed a plan worked out for if you get an STD.

"Should there be a plan for every time a small group of Islamic radicals try to incite riots and violence?"

Probably not, and if that had been the question I asked, it would have been a great answer. Do you feel that Iraq tumbling into civil war is an unlikely enough scenario that we needen't give it very much thought? 'Cause it seems that it's been a fairly reasonable possability since we threw democracy at them.

And Kevin. No, we didn't blow up the Mosque. We are nto to blame for blowing up the Mosque. We are to blame for being there, and the conditions favorable to the people who blew up the Mosque are a direct result of that mistake. What exactly have we made better in Iraq since we got there?

"we need to start treating the Iraqis like grown ups". I agree. Lets start by not helping them kill each other if that's what they are intent on doing. Lets say we don't fund them, or do it for them, or arm police forces that turn out to be death squads.

If things don't start tending toward not only a functional democracy, but one that elects a party that supports the rights of all Iraqis, at what point might we leave? Or say if things continue to get worse, how long can we stay on the idea that if we leave the worseness would be even worse? But hey, why think about or plan for ugly shit like that. We can just stay there until the mission is accomplished and we don't need to talk about how long that might take or how we might see if we're accomplishing anything or how we'd know if we were actively making things worse. And don't wonder about what to do if the elected party starts useing militias and death squads or wonder what we'll do if they start doing shit even we can't support. All we know for certain is that we can't leave. So if we can't leave, we're staying. Any thinking beyond that or about it is not the kind of thing we do.