Bush faltered during Katrina partly because he was distracted by Iraq. Ironically, the chaos left in the wake of Katrina in many ways paralleled the collapse of civil society in Iraq after Saddam. (A further irony: Half of the Louisiana National Guard was missing during Katrina because it had been sent to restore order in Iraq.) Iraq certainly needed all the help it could get. Insurgents blew up police stations and marketplaces; saboteurs destroyed power facilities and cut oil pipelines; and rival religious sects, tribes, warlords, and criminal gangs pushed the country toward anarchy.
While coalition forces attempted to halt the violence, political officials laid the foundations for a new Iraqi government. On June 28, 2004, the coalition transferred nominal authority to an Iraqi Governing Council whose chief task was to organize the election of a National Assembly to draft a constitution. On January 30, 2005, nearly 8 million Iraqis went to the polls, almost two-thirds of the eligible voters.
The election, though fraught with irregularities, offered a glimpse of the democratic Iraq that Bush hoped would initiate a broader transformation of the Middle East. But the election also underscored the divisions within Iraq. In the north, the Kurdish
In 2006 an Iraqi tribunal convicted Saddam Hussein of murdering his own people and sentenced him to death by hanging. What might have been a defining moment in the emergence of a new Iraq was marred when he was rushed to the gallows and taunted by his executioners.
Majority won most of the seats, but Kurdish leaders sought to form their own state and secede. In the south, the Shiites embraced a messianic strain of Islam and had strong ties to the radical Islamic clerics who ruled Iran. The Sunnis, adherents of the version of Islam that prevailed in most of the Arab world from Saudi Arabia through North Africa, dominated the region around Baghdad. Post-Saddam Iraq was on the verge of fracturing into separate nations.
Complicating matters further was the decision by terrorists to wreck the new government by driving a deeper wedge between Sunnis and Shiites. On February 22, 2006, insurgents blew up the golden dome of the Askariya Mosque in Sammara, a Shiite shrine. Enraged Shiites attacked Sunni mosques and clerics, triggering an endless cycle of reprisals. Some Iraqi military and police officers formed extralegal death squads to eliminate Sunni leaders and terrorize their followers. Sunni militias responded in kind.
In the fall of 2006, an Iraqi tribunal convicted Saddam of killing 148 Shiites, the first of several planned trials to chronicle his regime’s genocide. But on December 30, 2006, the Iraqi government dispatched Saddam to the gallows. Instead of marking
The triumph of law over tyranny, the executioners resembled the Shiite death squads: Hangmen
Taunted Saddam and chanted the name of Muqtada Al Sadr, a Shiite cleric whose militias caused much of the chaos.
Through it all, American officials groped their way through the bewildering labyrinth of Iraqi politics and religion. U. S. policies seemed to offend everyone. Often the only apparent issue uniting Iraqi factions was their condemnation of “infidel" troops in Iraq. Yet thoughtful Iraqis conceded that in the absence of American soldiers, Iraq would likely fracture, plunging the country into full-scale civil war and perhaps setting the entire Middle East ablaze. Bush decided to persist.
Attacks on security forces and civilians intensified and casualties mounted. As the 2006 U. S. congressional elections approached, the war was costing $2 billion a week; the annual U. S. deficit soared to a half trillion dollars. Democrats, most of whom had voted for the war, increasingly withdrew their support. Some Republicans, too, defected from the president’s position.
When the midterm votes were counted, the Republicans were decisively defeated. Democrats now controlled Congress—and the budget. Several days
Francisco ("Paquito") Martinez, 20 Curtis E. Glawson Jr., 24
Francisco G. Martinez.
Curtis E. Glawson Jr.
World History
