History majors need not apply

As reported by Reuters and posted on Daily Kos, the man who oversaw the initial U.S. - excuse me - coalition occupation of Iraq says that they didn't anticipate an insurgency. That's right, Paul Bremer and his occupying colleagues are admitting that they were clueless when it came to recent history of similar events in the same part of the world.

WASHINGTON - Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, has admitted the United States did not anticipate the insurgency in the country, NBC Television said on Friday.

Bremer, interviewed by the network in connection with release of his book on Iraq, recounted the decision to disband the Iraqi army quickly after arriving in Baghdad, a move many experts consider a major miscalculation.

When asked who was to blame for the subsequent Iraqi rebellion, in which thousands of Iraqis and Americans have died, Bremer said "we really didn't see the insurgency coming," the network said in a news release.

Let's see, does anyone remember Afghanistan in the 1980s?

Does anyone remember Kosovo in the 1990s?

One involved the massive influx of insurgents - a.k.a. mujahideen - led by none other than Osama bin "forgotten" and intent on battling the Soviet Union's occupying forces, while the other involved the expected influx of mujahideen in response to the ethnic cleansing of Muslims by Slobodan Milosevic and his henchmen. One reason why NATO forces got involved in Kosovo when they did was to prevent just such an insurgency.

The first thing the coalition forces should have done when they invaded Iraq was to secure all borders. Of course, that would have required significantly greater troop strength, an idea that Rummy and his merry men ignored when General Shinseki suggested it long before the invasion began.

Is it any wonder that this charade in Iraq has been a royal clusterfuck from the very beginning? The people in charge have not learned to pay attention to history, something that may have drastically altered the course of events in Iraq.

Then again, maybe they wanted the insurgency to happen. It certainly has given them a nice excuse to prolong their glorious war and all that it entails.