In February last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer about the success of the � ���"surge� �� � in Iraq: � ���"The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure,� �� � she said. Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted candidly in mid-March that without � ���"sectarian reconciliation� �� � among Iraqis the � ���"strategy won't work.� �� � Indeed, the entire point of the surge of 30,000 troops was to bring such reconciliation about by, in Gates' words, � ���"buy[ing] the Iraqis time.� �� � Gates was wrong, what is required is a national reconciliation, not a sectarian one. Sectarian strife was � ���"the� �� � expected outcome of the removal by invasion of a national regime, not the other way round.
Less than seven years on, the � ���"political process� �� � has already proven a failure. Those same players -- whom the White house, whether under Obama or under his predecessor, George W. Bush, has been trying to recruit recognition of their legitimacy by the United Nations, but more importantly by their Arab brethren and regional neighbors � ��" doomed it a failure. This � ���"process� �� � seeks to reconcile the irreconcilable militias turned into political parties, whose dual loyalty is more to Iran and the U.S. than to their own people, who are driven by this dual loyalty and their factional interests than by the national interests of Iraq, incessantly playing their U.S. and Iranian mentors one against the other, and more than ready to instantly recur to militia practices and drop their posturing as civilized political players whenever their narrow factional interests are threatened or their quotas in the U.S. � ��"engineered � ���"political process� �� � diminish or seem about to be altogether lost.
Four de Facto Governments
Ironically, Iraq has now two self� ��"proclaimed sectarian governments, the first is the Shiite U.S. � ��" installed and backed in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone and the second is the al-Qaeda's underground Sunni Islamic State of Iraq (or Dawlat al-'Iraq al-Islamiyya in Arabic); both are in a declared state of war, but neither has real authority on the ground that encompasses all the regional territory of the country. A third de facto theocratic pro� ��"Iran Shiite state has evolved in southern Iraq, where it is no more possible to discern whether Baghdad or Tehran is the central authority. It is no surprise a strong call is made for a � ���"federal� �� � entity similar to the Kurdish one in the north. A fourth de facto Kurdish government rules in Iraqi Kurdistan, but similarly has no � ���"national� �� � authority. Legitimacy of the four governments is challenged both internally and externally. Obama's strategy, like that of his predecessor Bush, reveals no concrete evidence that he is looking for anything other than sustaining this tragic status-quo in Iraq.
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