U.S. Sends More Troops to Iraq
U.S. Sends More Troops to Iraq by Steve Almasy, Barbara Starr and Chelsea J. Carter, CNN
The United States has increased its military presence in Iraq, ordering 300 more troops to the violence-ravaged nation, the Pentagon announced Monday.
ISIS militants have "continued to pose a legitimate threat to Baghdad and its environs," a U.S. official told CNN. "We have seen them reinforce themselves around Baghdad enough to convince us more troops was the prudent thing to do."
The new troops, 200 of whom arrived Sunday and Monday, will provide security for the U.S. Embassy, the Baghdad airport and other facilities in Iraq, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said.
The deployment includes "a detachment of helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles, which will bolster airfield and travel route security," Kirby said in a written statement.
The airport is in western Baghdad about 12 miles (20 kilometers) by helicopter from the embassy in the capital's fortified Green Zone.
The 300 troops are in addition to 300 U.S. advisers who will help train Iraq's security forces. They will bring the total of American forces in Iraq to about 800 troops…
So 300 advisors are not boots on the ground—now another 300 boots on the ground are for security and then what are the next 300 boots on the ground to be called?
Boots on the ground regardless of the title given them will still have a US military person wearing them.
So is this the new WH policy even after the West Point Foreign Policy speech?—and we are now back into Iraq when the realists of the world state Iraq is not in the interests of the US nor was it ever in the interests of the US regardless of the spun intel.
With the increased troop count, the drones, and the Hellfires–has it gotten the Iraqi’s an “inclusive government”?
We the US “looked the other way in 2010” when they was a golden opportunity to create an “inclusive government”—the question has to be asked why did we look the other way and in whose interest was it to look the other way?
When will the US realize this is about Sykes-Picot and that Putin has shown the way forward with his new doctrine of redrawing borders.
The Genie is out of the bottle and we let that Genie out in 2003 and in the end all the new boots on the ground and Hellfires will not change that fact.
Outlaw-09,
Great to see your commentary here. I am so happy that someone recognizes the big mistake was in “looking the other way” in 2010. Whose interests were served by this sin of omission? A President determined to get out of Iraq at all costs and to avoid confrontation at everyone’s expense? Fault also lies with the military planners who were dreaming big about 35-50,000 troops post-2011 yet unwilling to test that groupthink by exerting pressure on the security ministries and on al-Malarky when he subverted the electoral process and used 18 extra months to consolidate, incompletely as it turns out, his shi´ite dictatorship. Ironically, the winner of the 2010 election whom al-Malady undercut was himself a shi´ite, Ayad Allawi, but secular and moderate. I discussed these thoughts in letters 100 and 102 of my essays home to friends an familiares. I would be interested in your thoughts. http://nedmcdletters.blogspot.com/2014/06/addendum-to-letter-100-police-reform.html
Ned, Outlaw, et al:
I read this again recently.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/dictatorships-double-standards/
“In each of these countries, the American effort to impose liberalization and democratization on a government confronted with violent internal opposition not only failed, but actually assisted the coming to power of new regimes in which ordinary people enjoy fewer freedoms and less personal security than under the previous autocracy–regimes, moreover, hostile to American interests and policies.”
“Yet despite all the variations, the Carter administration brought to the crises in Iran and Nicaragua several common assumptions each of which played a major role in hastening the victory of even more repressive dictatorships than had been in place before. These were, first, the belief that there existed at the moment of crisis a democratic alternative to the incumbent government: second, the belief that the continuation of the status quo was not possible; …”
Consider this against the Wolfowitz comment I provided below:
“Our friends in Israel tell us that the Palestinian intifada is exacting an insupportable economic and human burden. Our friends in Saudi Arabia tell us that they are sitting on a fundamentalist powder keg. The status quo is not an option. Imaginative new approaches are needed. The unelected governments comprising the Arab League must be persuaded to reform, to embrace democratic pluralism, by force if necessary.”
Ambassador Kirkpatrick –the realist — provides us with a proper understanding.
But the idealists (in both parties) do, on occasion, prevail against such logic, examples and rationale.
Wherein we, and the populations involved, seem to pay a heavy price indeed.
Robert Jones would say —the current problem in Iraq is the lack of the rule of law and good governance.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/08/iraq-s-vice-president-this-is-a-full-on-sunni-revolt.html
Taken from the above link:
“I can assure you a widespread spectrum of groups participated in what happened in Mosul. The media is focusing on ISIS,” he said. “They are influential and empowered on the ground and they are participating in this armed revolution. But we shouldn’t be blamed for that.”
The Maliki government reneged on its promises to build an inclusive government with the Sunnis as soon as the American troops left Iraq, Hashimi said, and went after Sunni moderate leaders even though those leaders had led the Sunni awakening in 2008 that resulted in extremist groups leaving Iraq in the first place.
“We managed to clean up our territories, especially Anbar, and we put an end for a time to he extremists. But Nouri al-Maliki, instead of involving the Sunni moderates, he attacked them, starting with me,” said Hashimi. “There are two sides, the extremists and moderates. If you target the moderates, you intentionally create a vacuum that could be filled by the extremists and that’s exactly what happened.”
As former U.S. official in Iraq Ali Khedery wrote in The Washington Post, the U.S. policy during the crucial years following the 2008 Sunni awakening was to place faith in Maliki to build an inclusive system rather than use American influence to support other political actors.
WaPo link:
http://m.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-we-stuck-with-maliki–and-lost-iraq/2014/07/03/0dd6a8a4-f7ec-11e3-a606-946fd632f9f1_story.html
Hashimi said that the Obama administration was repeating that mistake again by sending U.S. advisers and equipment to shore up the Iraqi military and considering U.S. military force against Sunnis inside Iraq. He urged the U.S. to stay out of the conflict.
“It’s a really annoying development. The U.S. is in the process of committing itself into another set of grave mistakes. Definitely we consider all this military support to Nouri al-Maliki an alliance with Iran against the Arab Sunnis,” he said. “Try to avoid any use of military means, try to be fair, try to diffuse the bomb by asking Nouri al-Maliki to immediately to establish a caretaker government. Try to be neutral at least.”
And don’t expect another Anbar awakening this time around, Hashimi warned. The Sunni tribes still remember what happened last time and they are not going to make the same mistake of expelling the extremists and thereby leaving themselves vulnerable to Shiite forces.
“Nobody from the Arab Sunnis are ready to repeat the same experience of 2008, no way. But if we establish a real state in Baghdad, extremism will be over, I assure you.”
“The U.S. ethically is still in charge of our security, our stability and preventing interference from foreign countries, whether neighboring countries or far away countries, it is still the responsibility of the U.S.,” he said. “Transparency, human rights, no corruption, justice, no interference. All of these values have been talked about nicely but nobody has pressed the government on which have been achieved and which have failed. That is the role of the United States.”
Consider the following statement — from Ambassador Kirkpatrick re: Nicaragua and Somoza cir. 1979 — and see if you see any parallels to the arguments being made re: Iraq and Maliki today:
“When he says that ‘the Somoza regime lost the confidence of the people,’ the President (Carter in this case) implies that the regime had previously rested on the confidence of ‘the people,’ but that the situation had now changed. In fact, the Somoza regime had never rested on popular will, but instead on manipulation, force, and habit, and was not being ousted by it. It was instead succumbing to arms and soldiers. However, the assumption that the armed conflict of Sandinistas and Somozistas was the military equivalent of a national referendum enabled the President to imagine that it could be, and should be, settled by the people of Nicaragua. For this pious sentiment even to seem true, the President would have had to be unaware that insurgents were receiving a great many arms from other non-Nicaraguans; and that the U.S. had played a significant role in disarming the Somoza regime.”
Likewise today — and as relates to Iraq and Maliki — should we understand:
a. That the Maliki regime has not lost the confidence of the Iraqi people; this, because the Maliki regime never rested on popular will but, instead, on the manipulations and force of the government of the United States et al.
b. That now that American-plus military might has been withdrawn, the Maliki regime is succumbing — again not to popular will — but, instead, largely to the manipulations, arms and soldiers arriving from other countries.
c. This suggesting that what we are seeing in Iraq today (much as was the case with Nicaragua cir. 1979) is (1) not “the equivalent of a national referendum” and (2) not “something that should be settled by the people of Iraq” but, instead, is
d. A contest of wills between (1) those who seek to transform the political, economic and social structures of various states and societies (to wit: the former USSR then; the United States today) and (2) those who seek to preclude/deny such transformations.
In the case of Nicaragua then, it was the United States that (finally) decided to play the spoiler role re: the expansionist agenda of the former USSR.
In the case of Iraq (and, indeed, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Egypt, etc.), today it would seem that it is the Islamists (with tacit approval and assistance by such nations as China, Russia and Iran?) who have determined that they will deny the United States its expansionist objectives.
Given this more-accurate characterization of these conflicts (a contest between [1] the expansionist United States and [2] those that would deny such expansions), now let us ask the question:
Should the United States send more troops to Iraq?
I thought this was a decent read. The point on Maliki is key. The other major Shiite parties are both more hostile to the former regime and more sympathetic to Iran.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/why-iraq-is-more-stable-than-you-think-108708.html#.U74NSR_7HNN
Why Iraq Is More Stable Than You Think
By DOUGLAS A. OLLIVANT
Deleted for the response jumped ahead of bwilliams’ post.