Eugene Robinson: In Iraq, Shattering Villages and Illusions

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/16/AR2007081601686.html

In Iraq, Shattering Villages and Illusions

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, August 17, 2007; Page A23

The next time you hear confident assurances from the White House and its supporters that the "surge" of U.S. troops in Iraq is working and that something called "victory" is within sight, remember the Yazidis.

The who? Before Tuesday, you almost certainly would have asked that question -- before two villages in northern Iraq, populated by an obscure religious sect, suffered what is now officially the deadliest terrorist attack of the war, with more than 400 people confirmed dead. The final toll is expected to rise, but the coordinated suicide truck bombings in the Yazidi towns already constitute the second-worst terrorist attack of modern times, trailing only the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001.

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Some war critics confidently predict that if the United States were to withdraw its troops, the al-Qaeda presence in Iraq would quickly become a non-factor -- that foreign-born terrorists, having outlived their usefulness to the Sunni community, would be driven out or otherwise neutralized.

I happen to think this is a reasonable hypothesis. But I'm anything but confident.

There are those who will see Tuesday's awful bombings as an illustration of why U.S. forces should stay in Iraq. I see the carnage as an illustration of how little the presence of 162,000 American troops can accomplish in a country the size of Iraq.

I don't think anyone knows with certainty where "al-Qaeda in Iraq" ends and "the Sunni insurgency" begins. I don't think anyone knows with certainty how the various Shiite factions will ultimately line up -- or even if a unitary Iraq, having been shattered by the U.S. invasion, can ever be reassembled.

What I do know is that anyone who says American forces have to stay in Iraq because they're protecting the Iraqi people should tell that to the Yazidis. Those who are left.