Iraq hasn't even begun

Timothy Garton Ash, a frequent contributor to The Guardian, writes in the Los Angeles fishwrap:

Iraq hasn't even begun
Consequences from the disaster we could have avoided will plague the world long into the future.
By Timothy Garton Ash
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH, a contributing editor to Opinion, is professor of European studies at Oxford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

July 19, 2007

IRAQ IS OVER. Iraq has not yet begun. These are two conclusions from the American debate about Iraq...

So Iraq is over. But Iraq has not yet begun. Not yet begun in terms of the consequences for Iraq itself, the Middle East, the United States' own foreign policy and its reputation in the world. The most probable consequence of rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in its present condition is a further bloodbath, with even larger refugee flows and the effective dismemberment of the country. Already, about 2 million Iraqis have fled across the borders, and more than 2 million are internally displaced...

In history, the most important consequences are often the unintended ones. We do not yet know the longer-term unintended consequences of Iraq. Maybe there is a silver lining hidden somewhere in this cloud. But as far as the human eye can see, the likely consequences of Iraq range from the bad to the catastrophic.

Looking back over a quarter of a century of chronicling current affairs, I cannot recall a more comprehensive and avoidable man-made disaster.

Read the whole thing here.