How the Bush administration institutionalized the ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq

A recent car bomb explosion in Iraq where 61 Shiite Iraqis were killed is the latest tragic incident in an ongoing civil war in Iraq instigated by the Bush administration decision to invade Iraq. Started under false pretensions, the immoral and unjust attack on Iraq in 2003 was soon followed by a disastrous post conflict reconstruction effort led by inept political appointees such as Paul (Jerry) Bremmer, and served as a cash cow for highly paid private mercenary soldiers from the corporate political complex. Although conventional wisdom and most Americans believe that the United States was the victor in the 2003 Iraq War, a closer examination of the facts on the ground, such as the latest suicide bombing on 61 Shiite males, indicates that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the true winner of the Iraq War.

Although most Americans are spoon fed their news through the mainstream press and cannot see the larger picture, a book by Peter Galbraith entitled, Unintended Consequences- How War in Iraq Strengthened America’s Enemies, gives a historical perspective on the current situation in Iraq. Unlike some of the mainstream political pundits like David Brooks from the right or Thomas Friedman from the left, Peter Galbraith is an expert on the politics of Iraq and especially Kurdistan and the Kurds. He has followed the Middle East professionally since he began work as a professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1979. In addition to his extensive time in Iraq and especially in Kurdistan, Peter Galbraith has also served as an ambassador to Croatia during the Croatia and Bosnia war and then later served as a member with the U.N. Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET).

By deconstructing all of the Bush administration’s blunders in prosecuting the war and the subsequent occupation, the book offers an informed viewpoint in how the actions of Bush political appointees like Paul Bremmer helped institutionalize the ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq today.

The most prominent and well-known examples of how the republican political appointee Paul Bremmer institutionalized the current sectarian violence in Iraq was his 2003 decision to ban members of the top four ranks of the Ba’ath party from public office. This ill-advised decision essential ended the 80-year-old rule the minority Sunnis had on the government and immediately disenfranchised all the country’s experienced bureaucrats.

His next decision dissolved the Iraqi army and security services and made enemies of hundreds of thousands of Sunni men with extensive knowledge of weapons and explosives. Although many supporters of the Bush administration down play this decision, the move dismantled a Sunni-run institution in a Shiite-majority state that had previously committed genocide against the Kurds in the northern part of Iraq and brutally suppressed a Shiite uprising encouraged by the Bush Sr. administration in 1991. Although it would have been hard for Shiites and Kurds to trust Sunni bureaucrats in a post Saddam Hussein Iraq, the firing by an American pro-consul effectively took the decision away from the Iraqis, and hampered future reconciliation between the Sunnis, Kurds, and Shiites.

A power vacuum created by the expulsion of the Ba’ath Party and the minority Sunnis who belonged to it, allowed Shiite political forces to gain control of the government after the Iraqi election in 2005. With control of the government, the Shiite political parties were then able to install Shiites into key ministry positions such as the Iraq Ministry of the Interior, which controls Iraq’s national police force. According to Peter Galbraith, the first minister of the interior in a post Saddam Iraq was Bayan Jabr, who previous job was to head the Badr Corps, a Shiite militia founded by Iran in the 1980s, proving funding, training, arms, and officers. The Bard Corps is now the Badr Organization and as Galbraith writes in Unintended Consequences,

“Iran is the winner of the war that George W. Bush lost. Iran’s closest allies in the world are the Shiite religious parties that, thanks to the American invasion, today run Iraq’s central government”.

The latest sectarian attack by Sunni militants is another tragic by-product of American militarism and Imperial hubris. In embarking on their flawed policy of trying to reshape the Middle East, as advocated by neoconservatives like William Kristol, Dick Cheney and Robert Kagan, the invasion of Iraq has only given Iran it most important strategic victory in over 400 years.

The attack on Shiite men waiting in line for a job with the Iraqi government by al-Qaida, a Sunni fundamentalist terrorist organization, is the latest fallout from inept decisions made by Bush political appointees in the critical post conflict period of 2003 and 2004. Although American voters have a short term and selective memory towards republican leadership during the Bush Administration years, the Sunnis and Shiites do not have that luxury.