[LZ_Bayonet]

"As far as Maliki is concerned, neither Iran nor Syria are enemies he cannot afford to associate with. Instead, the internal Iraqi Sunnis who have been murdering his people for a generation, are the enemy he cannot and will not associate with.

But, Iraq is not a dictatorship. Do most Shia agree with him, or are they more secular and given to some form of reconciliation without civil war? (which the people in the streets (not the Green Zone) have had a nasty taste of). Which maybe prompted Bush to say:

Mr Bush said the people of Iraq had made a great step towards reconciliation.

If the government doesn’t respond to the demands of the people, they will replace the government.

[JasonC]

Yes, most Shia agree with him. More exactly, the more democratic faction of the Shia would be willing to try continued peace with the Sunnis, if and only if they sincerely believe the US will remain indefinitely and impose that peace. Otherwise, the Shia will find themselves left to face the same crew of mad bombers they and we have been fighting for the last several years, without our aid. And they will fight them more not less, without our restraint. They will rely on Sadr, and on help from Iran. And they will win outright.

Maliki's actions are the perfectly predictable result of Petraeus defying him and arming the Sunnis, in line with the wishes of the Saudis, and as a means of balancing against Iran. The naive hope that this would result is some touching national reconciliation is and always was a pipe dream.

The Sunnis have bombed mercilessly for years without consequences to themselves, are securing US and Saudi support despite it, and regard themselves as indispensible to the world for the same reasons they think Saddam was - as an Arab strongman front against Iran and the Shia. As far as the Sunnis are concerned, they are winning, and when the Americans leave, they expect to fight the Shia, defeat them, and rule them with the utmost brutality just like they did under Saddam. They never accepted the loss of even a particle of their power. The most they will do in the future is be somewhat nicer to the Kurds and make sure they get along with the Saudis.

The Shia see all of this, even if the US does not. Abandoned by the US, they will side with Iran, as likely to still be around in five years and actually willing to help them. Instead of telling them not to fight back when mad bombers slaughter their children in the marketplace every morning, the Iranians will tell them to go to it and murder their enemies. Which they will proceed to do. Probably with complete success, since US failure to quell the Sunnis is entirely a result of our Queensbury rules and attempts to be "even handed" between the terrorists and their targets.

The Sunni terrorists in Iraq will be defeated militarily in less than two years by Ahmadinejad, who will then crow that he succeeded in half the time where the US with all its supposed might, failed. He will trumpet this as a vindication of Islam etc. The Saudis will react to all of the above by seeking their own nuclear deterrent to contain Iran.

Can anyone here play this game? It would appear not.