The fall of post invasion Iraq

[Anomalocaris]

At the time of withdrawal, Maliki did not want US Forces at all.

I was part of the last staging for the removal of all US Forces. The elections were one sided. He wanted to give Shittes all the power, and make the Sunnis second class citizens. There was no back room deals, they were not signing the SOFA period.

That is likely because the US would not have given Maliki a blank check to make the US overtly complicit in subjugation of Sunnis. So Maliki would be a deadman if he consented to US staying under these conditions when he could get the US out.

So we bluffed by saying we will leave if he doesn't sign SOFA. He bluffed by saying he doesn't need us.

Maliki called our bluff first, now we can call his bluff.

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I think our error in Iraq was not the invasion part. The invasion was the easy part. Where we screwed up is in disbanding the Iraqi army and marginalizing the Sunni's.

I think Dubya's administration saw the possibility of having bases literally in the middle of the middle east, and was willing to risk it. The possibility that it would lead to more wars and not less may also have been seen as a feature and not a bug.

Dubya's administration thought the middle east was a computer game, inhabited by sims that aspire to become paler versions of neoconservatives, and to which they have the cheat codes. They had no idea there was a reality in the middle east so entrenched that it has lasted longer than the English language.