–The 2003 invasion of Iraq was approved by both parties
and driven by the Neoconservatives in both parties. There was no need for a
war in Iraq. Even if Saddam Hussein had WMD he was not a threat to the
United States, and because we have none but parasitic allies in the Middle
East, we needed to let them fend for themselves. (NB: We
need to do this now.)
–Saddam Hussein was our best ally in the war against the
Sunni Islamists, an ally that we did not have to cajole, pay, or urge to act
against the Sunni militants. That he diddled around with and funded the
Palestinian fighters is true, but he was reliably lethal — for his
government’s own interests — when it came to killing mujahedin trying to
transit or set up shop in Iraq. Without Saddam to hold the center of the
Arab world and block the insurgents’ easy east-west movement, we now have a
mujahedin theater of operations that extends from Morocco on the Atlantic,
to Jakarta in the Pacific, and from the North Caucasus in the north, to
Nigeria in the south.
–The U.S. military and its allies were defeated in Iraq.
They were all shackled by political constraints and by suicidal
rules-of-engagement, but U.S. generals dutifully played the role of toadies
by telling the public there was “no military solution” in Iraq. There is
always a military solution to war and, if it is not implemented, defeat is
certain. (NB: This is equally true of the Afghan War.)
–All U.S. military personnel killed, wounded, or maimed in
Iraq were a waste of our most precious assets. They were led to defeat by
two presidents, myriad generals, and congresses that clearly never had any
intention of winning the wars they started. (NB: (a) This
is equally true of the Afghan War; (b) The cost of not winning either war
has been the shredding of the 4th Amendment, and will be further constraints
on civil liberty in the future.)
–U.S. Iraq policy in the Bush and Obama administrations
was made by men and women who either cannot tell the difference between
theory and reality, or were cursed with the feckless Ivy League educations
that in the last four administrations have marched this country at quick
step to the rim of hell. Saddam’s rule was brutal not only because he was
brutal but because authoritarian government is the only way to keep Iraq
united and the country’s Sunnis and Shias away from each other’s throat. The
constant refrain by Obama, Cameron, Hollande, and other NATO leaders that
there will be an “inclusive government” in Iraq — that is, Sunnis, Shia,
Kurds, and Sufis amiably working together — is witness to either their
deceit or stupidity. From March, 2003, until today there was never a chance
of creating an inclusive regime in Iraq. It will not happen in the future.
–The now canonized “Surge” achieved a temporary halt in
the mujahedin’s progress in Iraq, slowed the pace of U.S. casualties, and —
as planned — got the Iraq war minimized on the agenda of the 2008
McCain-Obama presidential debates. But the most important long term result
of the surge was that it pushed the mujahedin out of Iraq into Syria,
Jordan, and Lebanon and so allowed them to regroup, rearm, and — as we now
see in the Levant, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere — live to fight and win
another day. At bottom, the surge was a cynical political scheme and
tactical military act concocted by a political general. It was not meant to
defeat the enemy, only to buy time for the politicians.
–The current call by most Republicans and many Democrats
to return 10,000 or 20,000 U.S. ground troops to Iraq will not change the
situation there except to make it worse; what more than 100,000 troops could
not do, will not be done by a fifth or tenth of that total, especially when
the foe is four times larger than it was a decade ago and the Iraqi regime’s
forces will not fight. In addition, the Sunni-Shia bloodletting that has
occurred in the last 30 months all but ensures a full-scale and perhaps
regional sectarian war. This is the best possible outcome for a bankrupt and
militarily worn out United States, and hopefully one that even supreme
bumblers like Obama, Kerry, McCain, Graham, and multiple retired U.S.
generals cannot prevent.
–The political demand for those troops is driven by U.S.
politicians who refuse to recognize that they have warred and spent the
United States into something akin to an over-the-hill Madam — John McCain in
drag comes to mind — who deludes herself into believing that her now sagging
attributes are as powerful as ever. We command no respect among the
Islamists who see the U.S. government as afraid to kill them and their
supporters; afraid to suffer casualties; and relatively indifferent to the
reality that it is a superpower that regularly losses wars to insurgent
forces with no air cover and limited heavy weaponry.
–The political demand also comes from the
Israel-First-owned Neoconservatives in both parties who caused the 2003
invasion of Iraq believing that it would enhance the security of their
country of first allegiance — Israel. They now realize that the Iraq war has
likely signed Israel’s death warrant and so are desperate to undo the damage
done to Israel for which they alone are responsible. Grasping at straws, for
example, Neocon Charles Krauthammer last week said the answer in Iraq was to
directly arm the Kurds and Sunni tribes to fight the Islamic State. This
sophomoric strategy was applauded by other Neocons, not one of whom asked
why the Kurds and Sunni tribes would fight and die to reestablish the power
of the Iran-backed Shia tyranny in Baghdad that the U.S. government and its
allies knowingly installed and then silently watched persecute Iraq’s
Sunnis.
