The crux of interventionism is that committing colossal acts of mass murder in a violent region somehow reduces the amount of violence taking place there. It’s dumb. The belief that Iraq will get worse when the occupation ends is an interventionist argument since it implies that the occupation must never end. For humanitarian reasons of course. The only way things can improve is if the people who have murdered and exiled millions of Iraqis over the last 2 decades finally leave them alone.

As for how the ‘sectarian violence’ in Iraq started, and who might benefit from it, read this article by Robert Fisk from March 2004 about the civil war. “All this talk of civil war, and now this carnage. Coincidence?”

Odd, isn’t it? There never has been a civil war in Iraq. I have never heard a single word of animosity between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq.

We are entering a dark and sinister period of Iraqi history. But an occupation authority which should regard civil war as the last prospect it ever wants to contemplate, keeps shouting “civil war” in our ears and I worry about that. Especially when the bombs make it real.

Now here’s the first part and the second part of an article from Counterpunch, also written in early 2004, about the main propaganda used to promote the ‘civil war’.

I listed reasons for a healthy agnosticism about allegations concerning Zarqawi, al Qaeda, and the supposed attempt to foment civil war in Iraq.

The first was that the alleged Zarqawi letter could not have been more congenial to the Bush Administration if it had been composed by Karl Rove. Invoking the spectre of the universally-loathed al-Qaeda, it supported the interpretation that all of our troubles in Iraq are caused by outside agitators, not the Iraqis themselves. The inference is that violence in Iraq is not part of a war of national liberation, not a structural matter that will impede the flowering of American-style democracy, but by agitation that will pass when we get our hands on Saddam Hussein . . . or, I should say, Zarqawi. The second reason for skepticism was that the communiqué was made public when “American officials” revealed it exclusively to the New York Times. Like many other government specials to the Times, the only source cited was “senior government officials.” There was no attempt to consult non-government intelligence experts, authorities on Al Qaeda, authorities on terrorist activities, or scholars on the Middle East to explore any causes for skepticism. Rather, the Times continued its habit of running with whatever the U.S. government says. This has been characteristic of other government “exclusives” to Times reporters that have proven to be false.

The “Civil War” was an attempt to rename the violence in Iraq. Rather than admitting that they were still murdering recalcitrant Iraqis, they could now claim that all the Iraqis were being killed by each other. They could also claim that all American deaths were the byproduct of being caught in the middle of an ‘Iraqi Civil War’ instead of an endless guerrilla war.

On a domestic level, they hoped the Americans & Iraqis would be cowed into supporting the occupation for fear of things getting worse. While the Americans seem to believe this, the Iraqis refused to accept American protection from violence that only arrived after the Americans became frustrated by their inability to control Iraq.

Scott, the Iraqis are fighting the occupation because they have virtually no electricity, fuel, or water and get tortured and murdered frequently. These things aren’t likely to change as long as the Americans remain there, so the ‘civil war’ will continue until they leave. I don’t think the current political situation matters to that many Iraqis, since it will be irrelevant once the occupiers (and the carpetbaggers) have left.

The Zarqawi communiqué was clearly a joke: “Zarqawi has warned of attacks on the majority Shia population with the aim of provoking a Sunni-Shia civil war to wreck the US plans to pull out of Iraq on 30 June” America sincerely wants to leave Iraq in June 2004; but only if there isn’t a civil war! That’s high comedy. Al Qaeda wants the same thing they did in Afghanistan in the 1980s – to defeat the invader. Sunni and Shia attacking each other won’t accomplish that, but it certainly will help the Americans.

You know that America is sponsoring Sunni terrorism in Iran, and is funding any Sunni group that they think will fight Hezbollah in Lebanon. They clearly think Sunni fighting Shia is the solution to their problems. Why do you think they haven’t been trying the same solution in Iraq?

vineyardsaker – read Nock. ”No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another.”

They didn’t plan for this to happen. They expected Jordan with oil and got the West Bank instead.

112,000,000,000 (112 billion) barrels of oil at the prewar price of $20 per barrel is 2,240,000,000,000 (2,240 trillion) dollars. The defense budget by itself is about 600 billion dollars per year now, so they could’ve skipped the war and just bought it all during the last 4 years.

They already have puppets in charge. The puppets can’t control the place, and neither can America. They’ll leave when they’re tired of fighting a hopeless guerrilla war.