The UN said the troops "surge" had failed in its goal to protect the civilians, rein in militants or stem sectarian warfare. Increasing rocket and mortar attacks on the heavily fortified Green Zone, where the US embassy, Iraqi parliament and many government offices are based, were cited as signs of how things are worsening. And Sunnis and Shiites are now more than ever determined to exterminate each other. In the parliament, the Speaker Mahmoud Mashadani, a Sunni, was ousted by the largely Shia-led parliamentarians after he slapped a Shiite member of the parliament. And Shia-Sunni conflict seem to have taken an ominous turn with the reports that Shiite soldiers in the Iraqi army are joining the Shiite militias to kill the Sunnis while the Sunnis are raiding Shiite areas, kidnapping, torturing and killing the Shiites. North of Baghdad, in Diyala province, Sunni insurgents blew up a strategic bridge linking provincial capital, Baquba. In another attack, the Sunni insurgents killed a number of police recruits, mostly Shiites.

This never-ending bloodletting between the Sunnis and the Shiites in Iraq has led many analysts to believe that the sectarian war cannot be stopped, unless another brutal dictator like Saddam Hussein emerges. When Saddam Hussein and the Sunni minority ruled Iraq, they brutalized the Shiite majority into submission, turning the Shiites into second-class citizens with no rights. And when the Shiite majority rose in revolt after the First Gulf War in 1991, Saddam's Republican Guards slaughtered them in thousands. As long as Saddam ruled, the Shiites had little chance to live like free Iraqi citizens.

After the US-led ouster of Saddam Hussein, the Shiite majority is flexing their muscle. But the once-dominant Sunni minority is now carrying out a violent anti-Shiite campaign, hoping to trigger a civil war which will bring other Sunni countries into a regional Shia-Sunni sectarian war. Now the Shia-Sunni conflict seems to have entered a cataclysmic phase and the dream of having a democratic and federal Iraq, where rights of both the sects will be protected, seems to be as distant as ever.

Edward Wong, a Chinese-American and a New York Times correspondent in Baghdad, points to the Iraqi notion of sahel at the root of the conflict. Sahel means, "to utterly defeat and humiliate anyone opposing you." This is a tribal idea that power must not be shared with anyone who doesn't share your values.

This implies that the American goal of establishing democracy in Iraq is doomed. It is doomed because Iraqis don't want it. The US is likely to fail in Iraq regardless of how long it stays or how much money it spends or how much blood it sheds. Most Iraqis are waiting for the Americans to leave and when they do, the long and real bloodbath will begin.