Who Lost Iraq?

Americans are more and more beginning to blame the Iraqis: they haven't used the opportunity we gave them with our blood and treasure seems to be the dominant meme.

Iraqis' role in their own suffering has been an issue since shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, when looters ransacked the national museum and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld dismissed it by saying, "Stuff happens." But more than three years later, with schools and hospitals struggling, electrical service faltering, and police and government agencies infiltrated by sectarian death squads, the question of blame is more urgent.

These are the same Iraqis who restored their oil industry, provided electricity and maintained public order after the devastation of the Gulf War. Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi nuclear scientist and author of The Bomb in My Garden, takes great pride in his and his colleagues' accomplishments in rebuilding Iraq after 1991.

We should have let them rebuild their own country this time, too.



[Update] Juan Cole's comment on Blame the Iraqis says it all.

I see. The US invaded their country, abolished their army, gutted their civil service, occupied their cities, and now it is the Iraqis' fault.