Everyone wants to point the finger at Iraqiyya now, but they are missing the point. This is about the economy and the brain drain of professional, mostly Sunni classes. The CPA, and later the US State Department and military forces, never quite grasped how to run the residually socialist state apparatus in Iraq. The sowed the seeds early on -- Iraq was a centrally planned economy where you had the absence of the legal, political, economic, and regulatory institutions that are the necessary underpinning of successful market economies. During the years immediately following the 2003 invasion, the CPA worked to install market-oriented policies and legal changes as well as transition state-owned enterprises to the private sector. This task proved to be enormously complicated for the inexperienced political appointees of the CPA and later PRTS and the U.S. military --During reconstruction phase of OIF coalition forces worked alongside State Department officials to rebuild legal, security, political, economic and regulatory institutions, which were important underpinning of Petraeus’ Counterinsurgency Doctrine. Regrettably, those institutions have not fermented to the point of becoming legitimate sources of authority and influence. Thousands of government workers, including policemen and firefighters go for months without being paid and the lack of an educated bureaucracy has frustrated the working class. Now they are looking for someone with legimate power to rule this country. Furthermore, US policymakers and intelligentsia have failed to acknowledge the thousands of Iraq political elite, living in exile, many of them former Ba'ath party members, but with the capacity and know-how to run that state apparatus. Before Saddam was executed he stated, and I quote, "even with all your tanks, planes and ground forces, you'll never be able to control this country. You give me one day of freedom, and this country will be under my control." The Americans just don't get it.

Dodge's analysis assumes that Iraqiya's followers will be angered when the government is finally put together because they won't get as much power as they were expecting. This fails to consider the fact that Iraqiya is made up of several factions. Allawi is angry because he doesn't think he personally will get a meaningful position heading the to be created National Council for Strategic Policy. He's probably right. Al-Hadbaa from Ninewa however will be satisified because one of its leaders Osama Nujafi got to be speaker of parliament. Saleh al-Mutlaq, who got banned before the election for alleged Baathist ties by the Accountability and Justice Commission is most concerned about ending his ban and returning to politics and perhaps getting a ministry. Basically, Allawi's continued anger over government negotiations do not represent all of his party, some of which will be satisfied and others who wont.

Would one of you smart folks explain to me what constitutes a 'mini-Civil War' in Iraq? Is the defining characteristic tens of thousands of casualties or hundreds of thousands of casualties? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Dodge is repeating an oft mentioned warning that If Allawi's followers don't get important positions it will alienate his followers, and by that Westerners always mean Sunnis. I don't think many Sunnis see taking up the gun as the alternative since they already lost the sectarian civil war. I would think more cynicism towards the government would be the likely outcome, and Iraqis of all stripes already have plenty of that.

At least the Americans still show humor.
http://www.usf-iraq.com/news/press-releases/us-soldier-in-iraq-killed-by-enemy-fire

An American GI was shot to death during "advisory operations."

yea, So any anger he might have comes second-hand. The Washington Times reported that Obama made a call to Talibani demanding that he step aside for Allawi, and was rebuffed...
massagem tântrica acompanhantes

Iraq's Power Structure Is Stable, Streets Less So
NPR, 11/23/10

STEVE INSKEEP, host: Over the weekend, Vice President Biden, as you may know, wrote in The New York Times that, Im quoting here, "Politics has a merged as the dominant means of settling differences in Iraq."

Do you agree with that statement?

Mr. NIR ROSEN (Author, "Aftermath"): I agree. I don't think it has emerged that recently. I think really thats been the case since the civil war ended by 2008, when it was clear that there was a new order. Shiias control the country and Sunnis realized that they had lost and were now sort of marginalized and weak. And then Prime Minister Maliki crushed both Sunni and Shiia militias -with American support, of course. And what that led to was the absence of any armed group that could overthrow the system. And you saw saw more and more, just different parties and movements scrambling to grab a piece of the pie.

INSKEEP: Does that mean that for better or worse, the situation is genuinely stable, not just apparently somewhat more stable?

Mr. ROSEN: Stable in a sense that the new order cannot be overthrown by any internal power, unstable for your average citizen in Iraq who deals, on a daily basis, with a threat of criminal violence, mafia violence. So in that sense, I say Iraq resembles, or will resemble, Pakistan or Mexico, and this is kind of the optimistic take. And you have a strong central regime, authoritarian, brutal, corrupt, inefficient, but strong and stable. And then you have terrible violence in the streets, which affects normal people or government officials, but doesn't threaten to overthrow the system.

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/23/131532507/iraq-s-power-structure-is-stable-streets-less-so