Uh-Oh!

Via the indomitable John F. Burns of the NYTs:

The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, corrupt charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.

The U.S. did its best to give the Soviets their "own Vietnam" in Afghanistan and now it seems we have forgotten the lesson of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and given ourselves our own Afghanistan.

While most of the insurgency is certainly native-born, the U.S. invasion of Iraq has created the conditions for foreign jihadists to train, fight, learn and prosper. Is it possible we have given the jihadists precisely what they wanted: Prime real estate to establish their long-lost Caliphate of an illusory past?

It definitely appears that way.