The lights go out in Baghdad, again

[Clive]

More depressing news, this time about how insurgents are cutting power supplies to the capital. Oh, and the violence has been getting worse (but you knew that already.)

Is it too early to ask the question: who lost Iraq? Stanley Kurtz thinks Charles Krauthammer is wrong to pin so much blame on the Iraqis themselves:

I’m the first to agree that underlying cultural barriers account for the failure of democratization in Iraq.  Still, I think Krauthammer’s formulations are too exculpatory.  Yes, Iraq’s political culture isn’t yet up to democracy.  The point is, we didn’t understand that.  All of America’s limited and particular errors (which collectively add up to a big mistake) are explained by our assumption that democracy would evolve relatively easily, even in the absence of strong cultural underpinnings... 

We thought mere calculations of self-interest would drive sectarian foes to act like democratic citizens.  We were wrong... We could have either scaled down our democratizing goals, or put in troops and other resources commensurate with an ambitious program of cultural transformation.  Instead we believed we could get quick, fundamental cultural change on the cheap.

As I've mentioned before, I supported the invasion, and I thought democratization would work. Unless I've got him wrong, the estimable Christopher Hitchens seems to be arguing that civil war, or whatever you want to call it, would have happened sooner or later in any case:

Many people write as if the sectarian warfare in Iraq was caused by coalition intervention. But it is surely obvious that the struggle for mastery has been going on for some time and was only masked by the apparently iron unity imposed under Baathist rule... The Kurds had already withdrawn themselves from this divide-and-rule system by the time the coalition forces arrived, while Shiite grievances against the state were decades old and had been hugely intensified by Saddam's cruelty. Nothing was going to stop their explosion, and if Saddam Hussein's regime had been permitted to run its course and to devolve (if one can use such a mild expression) into the successorship of Udai and Qusai, the resulting detonation would have been even more vicious.

He may well be right, but it's still not a terribly reassuring thought, is it? I hate to pile on the gloom so early, but this Marine Corps officer's view about what happens on the ground when US troops withdraw from insurgent areas doesn't make cheerful reading, either.