Successful imperial ventures are built upon the assistance of a local collaboration class who do most of the policing and management work, ensuring the proceeds move (mostly) towards the imperial center.
The Bush administration turned this on its head, smashing - instead of absorbing - the state and creating an obviously co-opted and powerless body (the IGC) as a stand-in. It deepened its folly (from an imperialist and militarist POV) by turning its poorly trained and overwhelmed troops upon the populace who killed and injured many thousands of people - guaranteeing so-called asymmetric reprisals.
The Busheviks attempted, in short, to run the country directly, like a wholly owned corporate subsidiary without the assistance and cooperation of local managers hoping it seems that "shock and awe" would keep people in a docile state (I wonder what role anti-Arab racism played here?).
This might have worked to a greater extent than it did (buying them more time for peaceful exploitation ) were it not for the fact they disbanded a military that was approx. 400 thousand men strong - casting loose a vast, jobless pool of men trained in violence - and the country is awash in light and heavy weapons which cannot be effectively guarded or destroyed.
When you consider the small number of "coalition" troops on the ground and the destruction of the state, and the ineptitude and graft of the 'reconstruction' effort, and the dismantling of the Iraqi military and the wide distribution of weaponry across the country and the daily humiliations, dangers and uncertainties unleashed by the occupation you have a nearly perfect storm.
...
Iraq is now, as they say, a 'failed state'. The Iraqi government, such as it is, is dependent upon foreign fighters for protection. These foreigners (mostly American) chase about the country in search of terrorists and insurgents, engaging in firefights and bombing campaigns which always inflict heavier casualties upon their enemies than they suffer but which serve no coherent strategic goal.
Large areas of the country are free to take whatever action the majority, or the well armed, deem necessary. The more time that passes during which they don't have to listen to a central government, the more difficult it will be to create one - even one backed by American violence.
And so an Afghanistan situation - only on an even more perversely grand scale - has been created.
Surely the great imperialists of the past, writhing in hell, pause from their torments to laugh bitterly in wonder that the "world's lone superpower" could, in such an astoundingly short amount of time, create a state of chaos that foils both its own plans and the hopes of tens of millions.
.d.