Since Aug. 3, there has been a massive dislocation of some 200,000 people from Iraq, resulting in more than 1.2 million displaced. Credit: Mustafa Khayat/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Bill Miller
NEW YORK, Sep 4 2014 (IPS)

The catastrophic events in Iraq that are unfolding daily are more significant than at any point in recent memory.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which is now calling itself the Islamic State (IS), steamrolled out of Syria into Iraq and appeared to be unstoppable in its march to Baghdad. The Iraqi military, which was far larger and better armed, was either unable or unwilling to confront this ragtag, but determined, force of about 1,000 fighters.

Simultaneously, the world was riveted on the minority Yazidi community that had to escape to Mount Sinjar to avoid certain annihilation.

What made the situation even more dangerous was that Mount Sinjar is a rocky, barren hilltop about 67 miles long and six miles wide, protruding like a camel’s back with a daytime high temperature of 110 degrees, as Kieran Dwyer, communications chief for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, recently reported from Erbil.

Dwyer also shared other staggering statistics:

— Since Aug. 3, there has been a massive dislocation of 200,000 people, as armed groups have ramped up their violence, and there are more than 1.2 million displaced people.

— The U.N. High Commission for Refugees is providing protection and assisting local authorities with shelter, including mattresses and blankets.

— The U.N. World Food Programme set up four communal kitchens in that Governorate and has provided two million meals in the past two weeks.

— The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has provided drinking water and rehydration salts to help prevent or treat diarrhea, as well as provisions of high-energy biscuits for 34,000 children under the age of five in the past week.

— The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) is supporting over 1,300 pregnant women with hygiene supplies and helping local authorities with medical supplies to support 150,000 people.

While returning from South Korea, Pope Francis sanctioned intervening in Iraq to stop Islamist militants from persecuting not only Christian, but also all religious minority groups.

This is a dramatic turnaround, given that the Vatican normally eschews the use of force. His caveat was that the international community must discuss a strategy, possibly at the U.N., so that this would not be perceived as ‘a true war of conquest.’

Shortly thereafter, French President Francois Hollande called for an international conference to discuss ways of confronting the Islamic State insurgents who have seized control of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Both suggestions tie directly into U.S. President Barack Obama’s intention to preside over a meeting of the United Nations Security Council during his attendance at the world body’s annual General Assembly meeting in mid-September.

Specifically, Obama’s agenda will focus upon counterterrorism and the threat of foreign fighters traveling to conflict zones and joining terrorist organisations.

Additionally, all major players in the region, even ones that have had a traditional animosity to one another such as Iran vs. Saudi Arabia and the U.S., must be at the table.

It is critical to remember that a major reason for the disasters occurring in many areas of the Middle East can be traced directly back to the misguided and widely-viewed illegal invasion of Iraq by former President George W. Bush in March of 2003.

Allegedly, the U.S. went to Iraq to disarm Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which did not exist.

When the bogus WMD argument collapsed, the rationale quickly moved to regime change and then to establishing democracy in the Arab world.

The real reasons were to control the oil fields and re-do that area so it could be manipulated by Western interests.

In reality, the legacy of the biggest U.S. foreign blunder in history left Iran as the powerhouse in the region, converted Iraq into a powder keg for conflict among the Sunnis and Shias, got 200,000 Iraqis and over 4,000 U.S. military personnel killed, and gave the American taxpayer a bill for two trillion dollars, which is a figure that will continue to rise because of the thousands of troops that will need medical and psychological assistance, as well as Iraq requesting financial, military and technical assistance in the future.

Tragically, some media outlets, such as Fox News and many right-wing talk radio stations, are putting the same purveyors of misinformation and disinformation – such as former Vice-President Dick Cheney, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer, Senator John McCain and Bill Kristol – back on the air to re-write history on how the Iraq War was really a glowing success.

In a democracy it is critical to have a cross-section of ideas and stimulating debate on Iraq and other issues, but it is questionable and foolish to heed the advice of such a devious and counterproductive group that adheres to the nonsensical tenets that if only the U.S. had stayed longer, left more troops or invested more blood and treasure in that region, there would have been a positive outcome.

They refuse to recognise that neither the Iraqis nor the Iranians wanted the U.S. to stay, and the American public was turning against a failed war.

Couple that with the fact that former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tried to isolate the Sunnis from any power-sharing or involvement in the political, financial and cultural facets of Iraq.

From the despicable beheadings of freelance photographer James Foley and freelance journalist Steven Sotloff, to the imposition of draconian Sharia Law that violates human and civil rights, the challenges in Iraq are multiplying daily.

Probably no one in the world knows this better than U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who said recently, “… I can bring world leaders to the river, but I cannot force them to drink.”

When the leaders of the world meet later this month at the U.N., it will be time for them to ‘drink the water’ for everyone’s benefit.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

U.S. soldiers in Basra, Iraq. Credit: PEOSoldier/CC-BY-2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 21 2014 (IPS)

Despite their ubiquity on television talk shows and newspaper op-ed pages, neo-conservatives and other hawks who propelled the U.S. into war in Iraq 11 years ago are falling short in their efforts to persuade the public and Congress that Washington needs to return.

Indeed, in contrast to the uncritical position taken by virtually all of the country’s media in the run-up to the 2003 invasion, a number of mainstream outlets are openly questioning the advice now being dispensed by the hawks about what to do about the dramatic advances by radical Sunni Islamists across northern and central Iraq over the last ten days.

The most stunning example – if, for no other reason that it took place on the hawks’ favourite news channel – came this week when Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly introduced former Vice President Dick Cheney as “the man who helped lead us into Iraq in the first place.”

“It’s a lonely job being an interventionist these days.” -- Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank
“You said (former Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” she said. “You said we would be greeted as liberators. You said the (Sunni) insurgency was in the last throes, back in 2005. And you said after our intervention that extremists would have to ‘rethink their strategy of jihad.’ Now, with almost one trillion dollars spend there, with 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say, ‘You were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many’?”

“Well,” Cheney, who had just co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed with his daughter, Liz Cheney, in which they had used the same phrase to describe President Barack Obama’s policy, replied. “I just fundamentally disagree, Reagan – uh, Megyn.”

Similarly, the normally staid and respectful New York Times published what could only be described as a mocking profile of Bush’s former U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, for his tirades against Obama’s policies. The article referred to the “homecoming week for the Bush administration” featuring a “cavalcade of neoconservatives newly emerged on cable television and in hawkish policy seminars to say ‘We told you so’ on Iraq.”

And when Republican Sen. John McCain, perhaps the strongest voice in Congress for intervention in Syria, called on the Senate floor for “immediate action” against the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to prevent their further advance toward Baghdad, Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank asked simply, “When John McCain makes a case for war, does anyone hear him?”

Indeed, the scepticism that has greeted the Iraq war hawks over the past week has been so strong that Michael Rubin, a colleague of Bolton’s at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) – the neo-conservative think tank that played a leading role in both planning and cheerleading the 2003 invasion — felt compelled to complain about “Media McCarthyites” who are allegedly stifling legitimate policy debate.

But, as Milbank pointed out, “It’s a lonely job being an interventionist these days.” Polls over the past several years have consistently shown a public that is more than war-weary. Disillusionment has grown not only with Washington’s military interventions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but also with the effectiveness of U.S. military power in general.

A poll conducted by Ipsos/Reuters last week found that 55 percent of respondents opposed U.S. military intervention of any kind, while only 20 percent supported it, and that there was little difference between self-identified Republicans and Democrats.

Those trends have clearly damaged the political standing and credibility of the hawks, especially those – such as Cheney, Bolton, former Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol – who played such prominent roles in promoting the Iraq war and are now calling for renewed intervention, at least in the form of air strikes, if not re-introducing U.S. combat forces.

Their diminished influence was made clear already nine months ago when they failed to rally lawmakers – even most Republicans – behind air strikes against military and other government targets in Syria after Obama accused Damascus of carrying out a chemical-weapons attack that killed hundreds of civilians.

The hawks now face a similar problem on Iraq. Thus far, even the Republican leadership in Congress appears satisfied with the steps announced by Obama Thursday – enhanced aerial surveillance by U.S. drones and aircraft and the dispatch of up to 300 military advisers to help reverse ISIL’s advance, possibly in preparation for air strikes against targets deemed threatening to U.S. national-security interests.

Washington is also pressing Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, whom virtually all observers here blame for systematically alienating Iraq’s Sunni population, to renounce a third term or agree to share power in a way that can swing major sectors in the Sunni opposition to the government’s side.

While most Iraq specialists here have insisted that air strikes or any additional U.S. military commitment be conditioned on Maliki’s agreement to these terms, as well as a major diplomatic effort designed to enlist the help of Iraq’s neighbours – most importantly Iran and Saudi Arabia – in stabilising the country, the hawks have argued that Washington lacks the military leverage (meaning tens of thousands of U.S. troops) to bring about such a solution.

For this, they blame Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops in 2011 after the Iraqi parliament declined to act on a deeply unpopular Status of Forces agreement (SOFA) that would have provided legal immunity to any remaining U.S. forces.

Indeed, consistent with their more general efforts at depicting Obama’s foreign policy as one of weakness and retreat, the hawks have focused most of their commentary on the withdrawal decision as the cause of the current crisis – as opposed to their own responsibility for the 2003 invasion and its consequences, including the destruction of the Iraqi state and the rise of sectarianism – than on what the U.S. should do now in the face of ISIL’s offensive.

Israel-centred neo-conservatives are especially worried about the administration’s interest in engaging Iran on Iraq, a development that began last week with a high-level – albeit brief – meeting alongside ongoing international talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

When a prominent Republican hawk, Sen. Lindsey Graham, endorsed the notion that Tehran, which, like Washington, has supported the Maliki government, could play a key role in dealing with ISIL – thus giving the administration political cover for pursuing the option – neo-conservatives objected vehemently.

“The idea that the United States, a nation bent on defending democracy and safeguarding stability, shares a common interest with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a revolutionary theocracy that is the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in the world, is as fanciful a notion that Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler could work together for the good of Europe,” wrote neo-conservatives Michael Doran, a top Bush Middle East aide, and Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in the Washington Post.

That theme was picked up by the Cheneys who wrote that “only a fool” would engage Iran on Iraq, ignoring the “reality” – as former Secretary of State James Baker (and Dick Cheney’s colleague in the Bush I administration) – put it, “that Iran is already the most influential external player in Iraq and so any effort without Iranian participation will likely fail.”

Of course, one of the many unintended consequences of the 2003 invasion and the Shi’a ascendancy during the U.S. occupation was to move Iraq much closer to Iran.

(END)