America’s other unfinished war

America’s other unfinished war recently made headlines when a protest in Iraq’s second largest city turned deadly when police fired into a crowd of protestors demonstrating about the lack of electricity and other basic services. According to a recent Associated Press news wire report:

More than 3,000 protesters marched through Basra, which suffers from searing summer temperatures that can reach 120 degrees (50 degrees Celsius) and high humidity. They carried banners and chanted angry slogans demanding a solution to the power cuts that persist despite billions of dollars in reconstruction money since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
It was a scene that has become more frequent across the nation as patience wears thin among Iraqis struggling to cope with less than six hours of electricity a day.

Although Bush supporters and other conservative voters in America may try to claim that Iraq is a relative success, the failure of the American supported government to provide basic services to its residents after seven years after the end of the war indicates that there is a lot more work to be done in Iraq before it can be considered a success.

The location of the protest in the Shiite dominated area of southern Iraq is a reflection of the continued internal political fragmentation within a country whose borders were drawn and determined by the British Empire in 1917. Unlike in post World War II Germany, a country that was able to establish its own borders and destiny after the 30 Years War and the Treaty of Westphalia, the people in Iraq are still suffering from the meddling of external powers such as Great Britain and now the United States.

The failure of the Iraqi government to provide more than two hours worth of electricity to the residents of Basra, is a result of the pervasive corruption in the Iraqi government enabled in large part by a corrupted political system in America. Ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, the political leaders of the United States need to take responsibility for this and begin to start holding the political leaders in Iraq more responsible.