Bush’s Bloody Legacy in Iraq

April 25, 2013 | http://consortiumnews.com/2013/04/25/bushs-bloody-legacy-in-iraq/

Even as George W. Bush is honored at his new presidential library, the painful consequences of his disastrous eight years in office continue to be felt, both at home with high unemployment and overseas with unresolved wars, including a troubling spike in sectarian violence in Iraq, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar notes.

By Paul R. Pillar
The most prominent civil wars in recent years have not started with a clear, firing-on-Fort-Sumter beginning. Instead they have been slid into as protests grow, confrontations between the regime and an opposition become more physical, and the government’s use of lethal force is increasingly matched by oppositionists firing back. This was the pattern in the civil war in Iraq unleashed by the U.S. invasion and later in Libya and Syria.
Now the same process may be occurring again in Iraq. A spurt of lethal violence this weekbetween the Shia-dominated regime and a Sunni resistance has featured such war-like encounters as helicopter-borne government troops firing on a Shia village. This is another stage in an escalating confrontation between the opposing sectarian forces in Iraq.