The chaos in Iraq

In what publication did this sentence appear last Wednesday?

“Iraq’s once highly fragmented insurgent groups are increasingly cooperating to attack U.S. and Iraqi government targets,and steadily gaining control of more areas of the country.”

Some liberal or leftist rag? Not a bit of it — the Wall Street Journal, no less. Thanks to Scott Rosenberg for picking it up.

The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq poses an uncomfortable problem for those of us who loathe and detest the political leaders who got us into it. At one level, there’s a grim satisfaction in seeing what an unholy mess Bush and the neo-cons and Tony Blair have created. But at a deeper level nobody in their right mind could take pleasure in the unfolding disaster. It’s destroying life for millions of innocent Iraqis. It will lead to the emergence of a failed state to end all failed states — with all the dangers that implies. It will destabilise the entire region, and in doing so affect all our lives. I’m not sure that these terrible outcomes can be prevented, but one thing is certain: if the Americans and the Brits were to pull out now, the result would be immediate chaos and either (a) the emergence of another Iraqi dictator (Saddam Mark 2), or (b) an anarchic, unstable cauldron of warring ethnic and religious groups. This is in nobody’s interest, with the possible exception of Al Qaeda. How those fanatics must love Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Co.