Apocalypse Not? Apocalypse Not?

Robert Dreyfuss: argues unconvincingly in Apocalypse Not that there won't be a bloodbath if we pull out of Iraq. This is the same sort of wishful thinking that we saw with John Kerry testifying before Congress that there wouldn't be a bloodbath in SE Asia if we cut and ran there. Of course, there was, with millions dying in the Cambodian Killing Fields, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese killed during forced reeducation.

Dreyfuss has it right that al Qaeda won't be a significant factor should we leave. But he assumes that the Sunni Arabs can hold their own against the Shia and Kurds because most of the former army officers are Sunni Arabs. But that ignores the fact that these are the former officers, and that the current army is controlled by their Shia and Kurdish enemies, along with its heavy weapons, etc. And note that the current crop of officers have current U.S. training, versus the Soviet style the former officers had. He also ignores that esp. with our "Surge" we are taking on both the Sunni Arab insurgents, AND the Shiite militias. He also ignores the moral suasion that is being placed on the Iraqi government and in particular the military by us to rein in the ethnic cleansing. He also ignores that the Sunni Arab percentage of the population is likely no longer the 20% he claims, but has probably dropped below 15%, and may be as low as 10% by the end of the year. And he ignores the recent provocations, ranging from the Ashara massacre, to the bombing of the Golden Dome, and, in particular, the almost routine massacre of innocent civilian women and children by Sunni Arab terrorists through their frequent bombings. There is a lot of Shia blood that needs to be avenged, and the U.S. is slowing the process down long enough that many Sunni Arabs can either flee their mixed neighborhoods, or Iraq entirely.