image credit: Associated PressThe new U.S. embassy in Iraq, which I profiled in 2007, opened today with a suitable fanfare of irony:
The United States dedicated its new embassy building in Baghdad on Monday, a step meant to symbolize its transition from occupying power to an ally of a sovereign Iraqi government.
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The opening of the new embassy is in line with a change of power that was effected on New Year's Day, when U.S. forces in Iraq officially came under an Iraqi mandate.
U.S. Opens New Iraq Embassy
Irony, in that this is an embassy that's more like a gated community than a place for diplomacy:
The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq’s turbulent future.
The new U.S. Embassy also seems as cloaked in secrecy as the ministate in Rome.
New US Embassy in Baghdad: Size of Vatican City
As I wrote back in 2007, as much as anything this place symbolizes how wrong our approach has been in Iraq, and how dangerous that approach has made the country.
2 comments:
Why am I not surprised that the Bush regime built an embassy reminiscent of the Vatican and ugly as sin?
It's completely in character for them, right down to leaving the embarassing explanations and apologies for the thing to their successors.
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