IRAQ WAR 3.0

From Informed Comment:

On a 36-month schedule for “destroying” ISIS, the president is already ceding his war to the next president, as was done to him by George W. Bush. That next president may well be Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state as Iraq War 2.0 sputtered to its conclusion. Notably, it was her husband whose administration kept the original Iraq War of 1990-1991 alive via no-fly zones and sanctions. Call that a pedigree of sorts when it comes to fighting in Iraq until hell freezes over.

If there is a summary lesson here, perhaps it’s that there is evidently no hole that can’t be dug deeper. How could it be more obvious, after more than two decades of empty declarations of victory in Iraq, that genuine “success,” however defined, is impossible? The only way to win is not to play. Otherwise, you’re just a sucker at the geopolitical equivalent of a carnival ringtoss game with a fist full of quarters to trade for a cheap stuffed animal.

In his televised address on Wednesday, September 10, 2014, President Obama said, "Our objective is clear: we will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy." and, "...we will not get dragged into another ground war."  Whatever the label for the present war, it is now Obama's war. I thought it right that the US helped to rescue the Yazidis from the mountain where they were trapped and that we provide assistance and military equipment to the Kurds, who seem to me the sanest people in the territory, but we should stop there. Is anyone thinking through to possible consequences of bombing in Iraq and now in Syria?

What will happen if a pilot is shot down and captured by ISIL, and the worst happens? Surely there will be cries for further escalation. Turkey has taken in over 1 million refugees. Are we willing to welcome refugees from Syria and Iraq whose homes are destroyed by our bombs or who flee from their homes for fear of being bombed? While it's true that we created a number of the problems in Iraq, I don't see how bombing, killing, and wounding more Iraqis will solve them. ISIL is a brutal organization, but what is the end game? How will we know when ISIL is defeated?  What if ISIL is not destroyed in 36 months?

Iraq, as a country, was cobbled together by British colonial powers after WWI.  Kurds and Shi'ites tried to break away at the time, but the colonial powers quelled the revolt.  Sunni/Shi'ite divisions go further back than the colonial period.  Despite past interventions by Western powers, we cannot now fix the troubles in the Middle East.  In Iraq, the center will not hold, no matter how many bombs we drop, but the destruction proceeds, and who knows how or when it will all end?  We can be certain the end will not come before more innocents are killed, wounded, or driven from their homes.

ABOUT THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH ON THE CRISIS IN IRAQ...

The Kurds are our best friends in the Middle East, and they remained so even after we betrayed them when Bush Sr encouraged them to revolt against Saddam and subsequently refused them help. The Kurds seem like the sanest and most compassionate group in Iraq at the moment, and, if they want a measure of autonomy in Kurdistan, I'd like them have it.

They've taken in Christian refugees who were driven from Mosul by brutal IS and are now accepting Yazidi refugees from Sinjar, where ISIS has taken over by brute force. We are already sending humanitarian aid to Kurdistan, and we are ethically bound to send humanitarian aid to the Yazidis trapped on the mountain.

I'm against violence in all forms and very much against the US policy of supplying arms to the world, and I'm not certain of the consequences of the military support President Obama announced last night, but I cannot condemn the policy. In this one instance, I'm willing to consider the possibility that the arms might help the Kurds continue their humanitarian efforts and help them retain control of Kurdistan. I wish there was an alternative to bombing, but I don't see it, and I do realize it could all go bad.

I am pacific but not 100%.  If I saw a child being abused by an adult, and the only way to save the child was to commit violence against the perpetrator, I think I would do it.  Reasoning from the particular to the general, I arrived at the conclusion not to condemn the president's decision to give military support to the Kurds and the refugees in Iraq, which includes bombing of IS positions.  I realize that inductive reasoning results in answers that are no more than probabilities, and I cannot rest easy in my lack of condemnation, but, for now, that's my position.

And there is the unspeakable horror of the story linked below, which is only one among many brutal assaults by IS on Christians and other minorities in Iraq.

Canon Andrew White, the "Anglican Vicar of Baghdad"

“I’m almost in tears because I’ve just had somebody in my room whose little child was cut in half,” he said. “I baptized his child in my church in Baghdad. This little boy, they named him after me – he was called Andrew.”

Canon Andrew ask for our prayers and our support.  The article includes a link to donate to support the church in Baghdad.

IRAQI CITY OF MOSUL CLEANSED OF CHRISTIANS

Christian families streamed out of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Saturday after Islamist fighters said they would be killed if they did not pay a protection tax or convert to Islam.

“For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians,” Patriarch Louis Sako lamented as hundreds of families fled ahead of a noon deadline set by Islamic State for them to submit or leave.

The warning was read out in Mosul’s mosques on Friday afternoon, and broadcast throughout the city on loudspeakers.
....

Mosul’s Christian community, one of the oldest in the world, has shrunk rapidly in the years since US-led forces pushed Saddam Hussein from power. Before 2003 the city’s Christians numbered some 60,000 people, but that dropped to some 35,000 by June this year, Mr Sako told AFP.

The United States is complicit in the destruction of the earliest Christian communities in the history of Christianity in Iraq as a result of sanctions and the invasion of the country.  As well, the US is complicit in the rise to power of IS (Islamic State) radical fundamentalists in northern Iraq.

The 1987 census gave 1.4 million Iraqi Christians out of a then population, probably, of 19 million. By 2003 the Christians were estimated at 800,000, with over half a million having emigrated during the years of harsh US/ UN sanctions, or having not been able to afford to have children. The US military occupation of Iraq gave Christianity a bad name and Iraqi Christians were most unfairly targeted as somehow American clients. Over half of the remaining Christians were said to have left by 2008, leaving about 300,000 or so. Now it appears that the remaining 300,000 are being ethnically cleansed in the north of Iraq, where most Christians had lived.

Wars always produce unintended consequences, but the mindless rush to invade Iraq on the basis of lies and deception resulted in the destruction of Iraqi society, along with many of its institutions. We see the results in the violence in Iraq today.  How ironic that the cruel dictator, Saddam Hussein, protected Christians in Iraq, even as the violent intervention by the US enabled the rise of cruel and violent Islamic fundamentalists who completed the destruction of the Christian communities.

Republicans and right-wingers can rave on from now till kingdom come blaming President Obama for the chaos in Iraq, but the facts of history show that the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of  Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush and their enablers in Congress, including, I'm sad to say, Democrats in both houses.

WHAT SHOULD THE US DO ABOUT IRAQ?

Dexter Filkins in a blog post in The New Yorker:

For many months, the Obama and Maliki governments talked about keeping a residual force of American troops in Iraq, which would act largely to train Iraq’s Army and to provide intelligence against Sunni insurgents. (It would almost certainly have been barred from fighting.) Those were important reasons to stay, but the most important went largely unstated: it was to continue to act as a restraint on Maliki’s sectarian impulses, at least until the Iraqi political system was strong enough to contain him on its own. The negotiations between Obama and Maliki fell apart, in no small measure because of a lack of engagement by the White House. Today,many Iraqis, including some close to Maliki, say that a small force of American soldiers—working in non-combat roles—would have provided a crucial stabilizing factor that is now Iraq. Sami al-Askari, a Maliki confidant, told me for my article this spring, “If you had a few hundred here, not even a few thousand, they would be coöperating with you, and theywould become your partners.” President Obama wanted the Americans to come home, and Maliki didn’t particularly want them to stay.

My comment in response to the post:

Dexter, years ago, I read your brilliant articles in the New York Times when you covered the Battle of Fallujah,  and I sent you emails commending you for your courage and honesty in reporting on the battle.  You answered my emails and we corresponded for a while.  I know you know Iraq far better than I do and that you came to care for the welfare of the Iraqi people while you reported from their war-torn country.

Still, I am shocked and surprised that you blame Obama's "disengagement" from Iraq for part of the killing and chaos we see today.  The president inherited a papered-over chaotic mess.  The Bush/Cheney administration wrecked the country, and there was no way Obama could have fixed the situation.  You'd have to make the case for me that a few hundred or even a few thousand US military left in the country would have made a difference.

You say:

Sami al-Askari, a Maliki confidant, told me for my article this spring, “If you had a few hundred here, not even a few thousand, they would be coöperating with you, and they would become your partners.”

Why would you take these words at face-value?  Maliki wanted us out, and we wanted out, so a very strong case would have had to be made to both sides to keep our military there.  Now it's all gone bad, and Maliki wants us back.  As others have already said, Iraq is three countries which were grouped into one geographical mass by foreign powers, and the movement now is strongly toward break-up.  I fail to understand how a small group of American military could make a difference, and I fail to see how the Obama administration is to blame.

When we send arms to Syria, we are not sure whom we are arming, nor are we certain where the arms will end up.  The same will be true in Iraq, and we end up arming opposing forces in both countries.

I wondered where the war-mongering neo-cons, who are now nipping at Obama's heels, got their talking points, and I thought it was pure made-up let's-get Obama-at-any-cost talk because an election approaches, but, to my great disappointment, I see one answer in this blog post, alas.

IRAN'S NUKE ACCORDING TO BIBI

Did anyone in the audience at the UN laugh out loud?  How could they contain themselves upon seeing Netanyahu show a bomb right out of a Looney Tunes cartoon?  My first thought was of Wile E. Cayote.

The Israeli Likud Party’s cover story for why it wants to draw the United States into a war with Iran makes no real sense. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been predicting an Iranian nuclear bomb since 1992 (a time when Iran had no nuclear program at all), and he has been wrong for 15 years in a row. Minister of Defense Ehud Barak and other Israeli officials have said publicly that Iran has not decided to go for a nuclear weapon. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has given more than one fatwa or formal religious ruling that making and stockpiling nuclear weapons are forbidden in Islamic law. Netanyahu is in a position similar to that of someone who wants to argue that Pope Benedict XVI secretly has a condom factory operating in the Vatican.

Bibi makes the case for war with Iran on the same bases that he made the case for war in Iraq.  By changing only one letter in the name of the country and using pretty much the same pattern of lies and misinformation which were successful in persuading Cheney/Bush to launch a war in Iraq, Bibi's script promoting an attack on Iran was written.  Check out the 2002 video of Bibi's testimony before Congress, explaining the dangers of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, which were later proved to be non-existent.

Check out the winners of  the caption contest of the photo above at The New Yorker.

THEY HAVE NAMES

Total War Deaths: 7787

Iraq: Total Deaths: 4804
-no casualties this past week

Afghanistan: Total Deaths: 2983

WORKMAN, Chris J., 33, SGT, US Army, Boise, ID, 25th Infantry Division
VIRAY, Don C., 25, CWO, US Army, Waipahu, HI, 25th Infantry Division
SHAFFER, Dean R., 23, SGT, US Army, Pekin, IL, 25th Infantry Division
JOHNSON, Nicholas S., 27, CWO2, US Army, San Diego, CA, 25th Infantry Division
METCALF, Michael J., 22, PFC, US Army, Boynton Beach, FL, 82nd Airborne Division
WALSH, Jonathan P., 28, 1st LT, US Army, Cobb, GA, 82nd Airborne Division
FANKHAUSER, Joseph H., 30, SSGT, USMC, Mason, TX, I Marine Expeditionary Force
VASQUEZ, Manuel J., 22, SPEC, US Army, West Sacramento, CA, 172nd Infantry Brigade
GONZALEZ, Moises J., 29, SPEC, US Army, Huntington, CA, 504th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade
NEAL, Benjamin H., 21, SPEC, US Army, Orfordville, WI, 82nd Airborne Division
BRITTONMIHALO, Andrew T., 25, SSGT, USMC, Simi Valley, CA, 2nd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group
EGGLESTON, Brandon F., 29, SSGT, US Army, Candler, NC, 3rd Special Forces Group
LEE, Jr.,Dick A., 31, SSGT, US Army, Orange Park, FL, 21st Theater Sustainment Command
MOSKO, Christopher E., 28, LT, US Navy, Pittsford, NY, Joint Special Operations Task Force
EDENS, Jason K., 22, SPEC, US Army, Franklin, TN, 1st Armored Division

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

May God give comfort, consolation, and the peace that passes understanding to those who love the service members who died.

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.  (Book of Common Prayer)

Source: iCasualties.org

Note: Estimates of civilian casualties in Iraq range from 105,000 to 1,033,000
For information, click here.

Estimates of civilian casualties in Afghanistan range from 17,000 to 37,000
For information, click here.

List from The Daily Office.

VALERIE PLAME AND JOE WILSON - NO APOLOGY YET

From The Huffington Post:

Seven years after top officials in the Bush administration turned their world upside down in an attempt to convince the public to support the war in Iraq, Amb. Joseph Wilson and outed CIA agent Valerie Plame said they still have not received an apology from anyone involved.

"No, in a word," Plame laughed and told The Huffington Post when asked if she or her husband had heard from any Bush officials. She said the closest thing she has received to an apology is when Richard Armitage, the former No. 2 at the State Department, publicly said it was "foolish" of him to leak Plame's undercover CIA identity.

Apparently Valerie Plame 'deserved' to be outed as a covert officer in the CIA's counter-proliferation division, because her husband's report which followed his investigation of the claim that Saddam had purchased enriched uranium from Niger did not line up with the Bush administration's contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, including materials for manufacturing nuclear weapons.

"One of the things that we have always tried to say is that whatever has happened to us as a consequence of the battles we've been involved in over the last seven years, and however painful it may have been for us, it is nothing compared to what has been done to our country -- and particularly the service people and their families -- by the ill-conceived war in Iraq and by confusion of what the mission was in Afghanistan," Wilson told The Huffington Post in an interview on Friday.

Yes, indeed. No good deed went unpunished for those who did not hew to the party line in the feverish atmosphere within the Bush administration as it prepared to invade Iraq.

Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson are patriots in the truest sense of the word. I was outraged by Plames' outing, and I'm still outraged today that this sort of dastardly deed was done in the name of pursuing a war which should never have started, a war that was justified on the basis of lies and misleading information. As Wilson describes the situation in Baghdad today, we will leave behind a sad legacy, which cost us and the Iraqi people dearly, but it's way past time for us to go.

Valerie Plame's picture from Wikipedia. Joe Wilson's picture from Military Religious Freedom Foundation.