Ambassador: Bush Didn’t Know There Were Sunni And Shiite Muslims Two Months Before Invading Iraq

Former Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, is making claims in his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, that George Bush did not realise that there were two sects of Islam within Iraq - a mere two months before he ordered the invasion of the country.

A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

This is just a further example of the level of ignorance that preceded the US invasion of this country, and a frightening reminder that the people who are supposed to build an new Iraqi democracy have very little understanding of it's composite parts.

This argues Galbraith is why the whole notion of installing a democracy in Iraq is destined to fail.

Galbraith argues that because the new Iraq was never a voluntary creation of its people--but rather held together by force--America’s ongoing attempt to preserve a unified nation is guaranteed to fail, especially since it’s divided into three different entities.

“You can’t have a national unity government when there is no nation, no unity, and no government,” said Galbraith. “Rather than trying to preserve or hold together a unified Iraq, the U.S. must accept the reality of Iraq’s breakup and work with the Shiites, Kurds, and Sunni Arabs to strengthen the already semi-independent regions.”

I have long argued that, by the time the US is finished building this new democracy, there will be no country called Iraq left standing. It will have disintegrated into three separate regions with the largest section aligning itself to Iran, which will be the true winner of Bush's ill thought out misadventure.

Iran, once thought to be Iraq's greatest threat, is now the greatest ally of the Shias in the south, arming them and financing them.

Galbraith says that, “thanks to George W. Bush, Iran today has no closer ally in the world than the Iraq of the Ayatollahs.” As a result, he argues, sending U.S. forces into Iraq, has in effect, made them hostage to Iran and its Iraqi Shiite allies and left the U.S. without a viable military option to halt Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear weapons.

A seasoned diplomat, Galbraith served as the first U.S. ambassador to Croatia, where he negotiated the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the Croatian war.

Galbraith fears the United States may have lost the war on the very day it took Baghdad. “The American servicemen and women who took Baghdad were professionals--disciplined, courteous, and task-oriented,” said Galbraith. “Unfortunately, their political masters were so focused on making the case for war, so keen to vanquish their political foes at home, felt certain that Iraqis would embrace American-style democracy, yet they were so blinded by their own ideology that they failed to plan for the most obvious tasks following military victory.”

Galbraith also believes the US will leave Iraq in a state of terrible turmoil.

“There is no easy exit from Iraq,” said Galbraith. “The alternative, however is to continue the present strategy of trying to build national institutions-displaced in the 2003 invasion-but how can you do that where this now is no longer an existing nation?”

The terrifying thing in all of this is that Bush's mindset has not changed at all in the three years since the invasion. He has learnt nothing. And he is now, as we witness in Lebanon and may soon witness in Syria and Iran, continuing to blunder around the most explosive region in the world starting wars with people he doesn't understand, and who's cultural history he has never taken the time to explore.

And worse, there is no-one anywhere in his administration who seems willing to stop him. Indeed, the current White House is inhabited by dangerous individuals who seem to think they can make reality in their own image if they just apply the necessary amount of force.

And they continue to believe this despite three years of evidence in Iraq to the contrary.

They say faith can move mountains. But, having moved them, can it put them back again?

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Tags: Bush, Blair, Iraq, legacy, quagmire, infighting, sectarianism, civil war,