I've been wanting to post a really long essay about Iraq, but I'm just going to give you a little morsel of it for the sake of expediency and to keep this page fresh. Today's topic: the June 30th handover of Iraq.

In assessing our war plans from the beginning, the White House often fails to answer (or, in most cases, even ask) one crucial question: "<b>and then what?</b>" Some examples include:<ol>
<li><i>We're going to kick the Soviet troops out of Afghanistan</i>, and in order to do so, we're going to subsidize the private foreign armies who are pouring into the country. <b>…and then what?</b> "Jihadi tourists," who were only there to fight and not to create a government, go on to form Al-Qaeda, et al after the expulsion of the Soviets and the descent of the country into civil war.
<li><i>We're going to get rid of Saddam</i> by defeating the Ba'ath army, which has been greatly weakened by ten years of sanctions. <b>…and then what?</b> I recall that before we sent troops in, war supporters rejoined with answers like, "the Iraqis will throw huge parades in our honor and shower our troops with rose petals," or, "we will install a democracy which will be a shining beacon to the rest of the Middle East."
</ol>
Since we know the first assumption about the reception of conquering troops has proven to be false, let's look at the second one–we will magically create a democracy from the ashes of Ba'athi Iraq.

Governments subsist on one thing: legitimacy. Whether that legitimacy stems from a long institutional history, or the presence of troops holding the ground for one faction or another, a government must be seen as legitimate in order to function.

Consider, then, whether or not the United States, the country leading a 10-year starvation campaign against the Iraqi people, the destroyers of public infrastructure, the killers of unreleased numbers of civilians, etc. has the ability to confer legitimacy upon any Iraqi government. It's obvious that although we have many wonderfully-equipped troops, we do not have this power. In fact, support from the U.S. government is a death warrant. Just ask Iyad Allawi's bodyguards, if they haven't been bought off yet.

The "handover" of Iraq is a great business decision: we don't want the responsibilities of actually running the country, so we should outsource the government of our neo-colony to friendly natives. But the Coalition will continue to maintain its military presence in Iraq, and not just because the new Iraqi government is incapable of raising a sufficient army. The problem is that any Iraqi government that stands on the strength of the U.S. army doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of garnering legitimacy in the eyes of the governed.

My prediction is that much like Afghanistan, Iraq will become a civil war-torn zone where the Coalition forces will be able to maintain control of central areas (like Kurdish territory and Baghdad), but the rest of the country will descend into chaos (kind of like what we have now, only worse). Invasions by Iran and/or Turkey optional.