Bombers and Ethnic Clashes Kill 61 in Iraq

From the New York Times:

Three women wrapped in explosives killed dozens in Iraq on Monday, shaking the country as chaos and ethnic violence erupted in the volatile northern city of Kirkuk, where tensions had already run high between majority Kurds and ethnic Turkmens.

All told, at least 61 people were killed and 238 wounded, nearly all of them Kurdish political protesters in Kirkuk and Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad. It was one of the bloodiest days in a year in which violence has dropped strikingly.

The violence in Kirkuk, with its delicate ethnic and sectarian makeup perched atop great oil reserves, deeply unnerved government and security officials, who instituted curfews there and in Baghdad. Leaders of the Turkmen ethnic group, in competition for land and political power with the Kurds, called for protection by United Nations security forces.

The attacks also underscored that the raw passions and anger fed by Iraq’s deep ethnic, regional and sectarian divides can still instantly ignite. Concerns about stability ran so high that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered a battalion of Iraqi troops to reinforce Kirkuk and put other unspecified “emergency reserve” troops on alert in case the violence spread, state-run television reported late Monday.

Click here for the rest.

John McCain should shut the fuck up.

The "surge" has not worked. Iraq continues to be an extraordinarily unstable nation. The relative decrease in sectarian violence in the desert nation has little to do with the moderate increase in the US troop presence over this past year: rather, violence is down, somewhat, because it has been wildly effective; the ethnic cleansing practiced by Sunni and Shiite extremists has eliminated mixed ethnicity neighborhoods. They're not killing each other quite as much because they no longer live next door to each other.

But make no mistake about it. These sectarian divisions continue, and will continue to erupt for the foreseeable future into the kind of mass murder described in the excerpt above. This is the problem that the "surge" could never even hope to solve. Indeed, the main component to the "surge" was always hope. That is, as the thinking went, try to crack down on the killings a bit and then hope the Iraqis can use the breather to get it together. That's not a strategy; it's wishful thinking. The US has done absolutely nothing to heal Iraq's sectarian divisions.

Here's a dirty secret: the US simply does not have the ability to heal Iraq's sectarian divisions.

And as long as the US remains in Iraq, propping up a government supported only by some factions, played by others, and outright dismissed as illegitimate by others, it is unlikely that Iraq will be able to heal itself. Yes, violence is down, but it continues to be extraordinarily high. We cannot do anything about it.

We need to get the hell out, as soon as possible.

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