Posted on 09/04/2025 8:02:13 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
BAGHDAD, IRAQ — In just the last two years, Baghdad has transformed. Traffic flows unimpeded through the former Green Zone. A new highway abuts the Tigris River in the heart of the city. Overpasses and elevated highways now cross Baghdad’s infamous traffic circles. The multibillion-dollar U.S. Embassy once dominated the shore of the Tigris River; now high-rise apartments dwarf it. Big name hotels — the Movenpick, the Rixos — are nearing completion and will soon cater to the hundreds of businessmen coming through Baghdad daily for their share of the deals the country is looking to sign.
In Washington, partisans and pundits see President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq as original sin, the marquee example of forever war that both Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump promised to end; Iraqis have a more nuanced take.
Iraqis say a lot of the money funding the investments is Iraqi. Iraqi businessmen may seek outside partners and franchise rights, but they have their own money to spend. Real estate is often a mechanism for money laundering. In Iraqi Kurdistan, one of the most corrupt regions in the Middle East, locals say new apartment complexes sit empty or have occupancy rates lower than 20 percent. Visiting friends in Erbil and Sulaymani’s newest complexes can be akin to walking into ghost towers, with lights off and signs of life only in one or two units per floor. In Baghdad, though, burgeoning population makes housing projects a necessity: Sixty to 70 percent of the country’s population was not born when the war began in 2003. The change in generation has infused new energy into the country.
Iraq is also approaching a generational change in its politics. Many of its post-war prime ministers — Ayad Allawi, Nouri al Maliki, Haider al Abadi, Adil Abdul-Mahdi — are in poor health, as are factional leaders such as Badr Corps chief Hadi al Amiri and Masoud Barzani. Younger politicians such as Muqtada al Sadr and Qais al Khazali now try to reinvent themselves.
While Yemen’s Houthis launched attacks against Israel during and after the 12-day Israel-Iran war, Iraqi factions and Shi’ite militias, with very few exceptions, stood down. Iraqi Shi’ite leaders wrote to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to protest efforts by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to encourage some militias to take up arms. Simply put, with business booming and Baghdad 2025 increasingly feeling like Dubai 1995, Iraqi politicians feel they have a good thing going that they do not want derailed by conflict.
Trump both eschews entrapping the United States in wars and favors business over either diplomatic or military strategies to further U.S. interests. His choice of envoys — Steve Witkoff and Massad Boulos, respectively for the Middle East and Africa — reflect this.
Yet Witkoff has not yet come to Baghdad. This is a dangerous omission, given how too many in and around Trump view Iraq through the lens of 2003 rather than 2025. The two countries could not be more different.
President George W. Bush imagined an Iraq that embraced democracy, eschewed terrorism, and thrived economically. He was not wrong in Iraq’s potential, only in the timeline necessary to achieve it. Rather than look at Iraq as original sin and a symbol of “forever war,” Trump should send Witkoff to see the new Iraq in which Egyptians, Emiratis, Turks, and Chinese all get wealthy, but Americans are inexplicably absent.
Israel neutered Hezbollah, and a Turkish-backed Islamist group ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad. Investing in Iraq’s thriving economy could be as effective to peel Iraq away from Iranian ambitions of an “Axis of Resistance.” Indeed, the biggest gift Trump could give to Iraq’s marginalized rejectionist groups as Iraq heads again to elections would be military action.
More ways than one I guess.
They say we lost Vietnam, too. But judging by our current relations, you’d think we won.
Business is thriving in Vietnam. And although still nominally communist, the country is open for business.
CC
Good, then close that mulibillion dollar a year embassy. No need for it. How much money can we throw away?
Luckily, Ho Chi Minh passed before the end of the war, so his successors weren’t so tied to Communism, and recognized it wasn’t working.
I remember when my son was in fallujah with the 82nd airborne before the marines went in. While he was there I watched a news segment where a couple of Iraqi real estate agents were complaining that when there was gunfire the 82nd would start shooting back everywhere. That made me happy that my son was keeping alert.
Although I imagine this works for the powers that be. (Iraqis get a strong economy and we have the nation under our control.)
Soon Babylon will be the banking center of the world
I think it’s got quite a ways to go before that. 😏
Impressive, hopefully they’ll be able to get Iraq up to the state that Libya was in before the Neocons DESTROYED that country.
Probably so. Depends on if we take the bible literally or allegorically. Or not at all.
BTW, The U.S. STILL maintains approximately 2,500 troops in Iraq, primarily focused on training, advising, and counterterrorism operations against remnants of ISIS.
These forces are part of the U.S.-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, which began in 2014 and includes over 89 countries.
The coalition’s presence has been gradually winding down, with a formal plan to end its mission by September 2026. Key bases like Ain al-Asad in Anbar province and facilities in Baghdad are scheduled to be vacated by September 2025.
Iraq has spent billions and has been extremely busy building the huge port structure on the Persian Gulf to act as an entry to either a canal or railroad bypass around the Suez Canal...
I thought you were joking but you weren’t. A land route to Europe would pay big dividends.
Well hooray! They have new overpasses and apartment high rises! That only cost us a trillion or two, 7000 dead, and tens of thousands maimed and about a quarter million dead Iraqi civilians, and created Isis.
But you should see the real estate now!
Great analysis Rubin….
Sounds like the typical outcome. The regular people suffer, then the piggies get rich and say it was totally worth it.
Why hasn’t Witkoff gone to Iraq? I don’t know. Probably for the same reason he hasn’t gone to Indonesia, Nepal, Albania, Belize or Tahiti. He’s got more important things to do. This is a silly article. The author makes no compelling argument for why visiting Iraq would significantly advance U.S. interests at this time.
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