This news headline - Iraq now ranked second among world’s failed states - seems to have left many in the blogosphere lost for words. But as Amanda Marcotte points out, if we don’t talk it up, it can be spun as people not really caring that the whole venture in Iraq is a clusterf*ck.
The Shrub can’t do anything right, can he? As of today, we’ve spent $436,458,000,000 on this adventure war, and still Bush failed to make Iraq the #1 most fucked-up country on the planet. Sudan skidded into first, and I guarantee you, they did it at a fraction of the cost.
Harsh but fair.
Updated: original Failed States report at Foreign Policy.
Apart from civil war, what do Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan have in common, I wonder?
Hint: its not GW Bush sticking his military nose in.
It is in 2 out of 3.
OK, I’ll make a wild guess.
All three countries are maladministered by leftie, pomo, multi-culti wets.
British nineteenth-century military defeats?
I just added a link to the original report in the post, but I’ll add it here as well.
Failed States 2007 report at Foreign Policy
Another triumph of Australian arms and diplomacy.
More like British nineteenth-century constructs - good old fashioned divide-and-conquer. Draw arbitrary boundaries with no respect for ethnic groupings, language, religion or the like and force them to become homogenised nations - always with enough internal weakness to prevent them challenging the might of the British Empire. Of course, sooner or later one group seeks to dominate and the blood starts running…
(And I doubt those who drew the lines on the maps could be described as “leftie, pomo, multi-culti wets”!)
Actually, I’m quite wrong on one major point. The British were never defeated in what’s now Iraq in the nineteenth century—please ignore my banal sarcasm.
I was thinking of the Crimean War, in which the British and the Ottomans were on the same side.
The Fund For Peace actually displays the full table - not just the worst 60 or so.
Until a replacement is found for the Ottoman Sultan - in the form of a new Caliph and Caliphate - the Oriental Muslim world will only get more and more diabolical. The Neocons’ failure was their liberal belief in the universality of secular democracy. Oriental despotism served these people well for millenia. The best thing we can do is try to let them get back it.
Unless of course, the wily Musselman of the Orient seeks a pact, a Juncto if you will, with the Phanatique Hindoo and the Inscrutable Chinee to better seek the extirpation of Christendom’s light and the promulgation of their Godless dervishery from Siam to Prussia…
Leinad
Oh yes, I can just the Harvard Business Review headline now.
“A New Paradigm for Successful Alliance Building: The Case of India, Palestine, and China.”
Iraq was not exactly “the light unto nations” before the Bush invasion. What with child-starving sanctions, corrupt administration, ethnic uprisings being brutally crushed, multiple wars against neigbours, abortive WMD programs, sponsoring Islamist terrorists and so on.
It is a bit like an alcoholic that has hit the skids. It will have to hit rock bottom before any progress can be made.
Afghanistan is a winnable war in that NATO forces can beat the Taliban back to the badlands where they belong. But I doubt that Afghanistan can be made into a progressive nation because…its Afghanistan. ‘Twas ever thus.
I just think that we should leave Southern Eurasia to its own devices. We should stay out of their affairs, and not try to use force to make their “systems” be like ours or like us.
Oviously they do not appreciate the North’s interventions in their affairs. And I dont see anything in it for us. I mean the oil will be sold whether the govt is Islamist or Presbyterian.
Conversely, we should make it clear that cultural influence from that part of the world to our part is not appreciated. The degraded state of political culture in these jurisdictions gives some idea of what it would be like if we made a serious, accross the board effort to copy their cultural attitudes.
Really, the idea of civilized nations learning from barbarians is flat-out barmy.
Australia, labouring for 11 years under the jackboot of Howard fascism, is rated the ninth most successful state in the world. The Old Devil must be sleeping on the job to let this much goodness go unbadded this late in the game.
Six out of the ten successful states are outright Nordic. No surprises there.
The four core USE countries (UK, FRA, ITA, FRG) and the USA languish down in the lower teens and twenties of the ladder. How could these great world powers be closer to failing than Iceland?
” What with child-starving sanctions, corrupt administration, ethnic uprisings being brutally crushed, multiple wars against neigbours, abortive WMD programs, sponsoring Islamist terrorists and so on.”
Jack must be reffering to the Bronx, good ol U.S.A.
I don’t want to seem like someone arguing over who gets to sit where in the lifeboat while a fleet of titanics goes under, but won’t somebody think of Zimbabwe?
With 3500% inflation, aid agencies are currently preparing on the grounds of ‘when, not if’ there’s a catastrophic breakdown of the entire zim economy later this year. The Sudanese government may be sorely illegitimate in the eyes of the (western) world, but they’re being unfortunately effective in persecuting a minority of their own citizens in darfur, and catastrophic state & societal failure or coup isn’t really on the horizon in the same way…
Zimbabwe is #4 on the Failed States 2007 index.
The worst 10 are as follows:
Sudan
Iraq
Somali
Zimbabwe
Chad
Ivory Coast
Dem. Rep. of Congo
Afghanistan
Guinea
Central African Republic
yes TT, I’m aware it got bronze, I think it should be higher.