Jim Hoagland, in today's Washington Post, deflates the myth of popular insurgency in Iraq with the reality of the motives of this gang of thugs, using an entertaining metaphor:

Think of the worst divorce case you have ever heard about, and then imagine the embittered ex-spouses armed with Kalashnikovs and bombs instead of legal motions over alimony and property, and you get some sense of what Iraq's Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are going through right now.

Other motives are also involved. Those so inclined can emphasize the religious fanaticism of the jihadists who have taken the battlefield in Iraq or the Arab fervor stirred by foreign occupation. I grant that both exist, and come back to the fundamental force of this counterrevolution: The warring Arab Sunnis of Iraq want the money. And they want to regain the privilege of dominating the country's other population groups.

Hoagland underscores the mercenary/power motivation by emphasizing that the convoy attacked in Samarra, which resulted in 54 dead 'insurgents' and 0 dead Americans, was transporting new Iraqi currency to banks, a fact that has been overlooked or at least underplayed by the media here. These insurgents are nothing more than bank robbers, or worse, Mafia-style gangsters who are fighting to win back control over their now-broken criminal enterprise. They are the equivalent of Capones or Gambinos, and they don't want liberation for liberation's sake; they're fighting for the freedom to oppress and terrorize and slaughter the majority of Iraqis in order to maintain their opulent, criminal lifestyles.

Read the whole piece; it's definitely worth your time.

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