Is this a bad peace or is it still a bad war?

"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one."
Agatha Christie, English mystery author (1890 - 1976) in Autobiography (1977)

When the US invaded Iraq, I said: "This is never going to work. You can't force Western-style democracy on a people with no historical connection to that ideology. Am I the only one who remembers Wiemar Germany?"*

But I think even those who disagreed with the Coalition's unilateral invasion were hopeful that perhaps the end could justify the means--that the invasion was unjustified, but perhaps it could be turned into something positive.

But now we have this...

"Shiites took their revenge in horrific fashion for Thursday's killing in
Baghdad's crowded Sadr City neighbourhood, dousing six Sunni Arabs with kerosene and burning them alive as they left Friday prayers. Uniformed Iraqi soldiers stood by and did nothing, according to reports from Baghdad.

In a country where thousands of bodies have been found decapitated or tortured with electric drills, burning victims alive added a macabre new twist to the fighting."

"Yesterday's spate of revenge took at least 30 lives in mosque attacks in the Hurriyah district of Baghdad, Iraqi police said, as Mahdi Army militia rampaged through the area, burning at least four mosques and several homes.

They appeared to be reprisals for Thursday's assaults in which Sunni militants used a series of car bombs and mortar attacks to slaughter at least 215 and wound 257 in the single worst sectarian attack since the war began with the U.S. invasion almost four years ago."

"The United Nations reported more than 3,700 Iraqis were killed last month..."

Excellent work, people. Nice to know we're spreading democracy, and doing such a bang-up job of it too.

*Obviously a lot of other people said this too. It's sort of self-evident, after all.