The Wrongologist

Update: Sen. McCain, (R-AZ) has provided us with some blog porn on our post regarding Iraq’s unraveling. Don’t go getting excited as you read the word porn, this blog post has nothing to do with porn you watch on sites like teeni.xxx, sorry to disappoint if I got your hopes up briefly.

Speaking to The Hill, Mr. McCain said:

The
president should get rid of his entire national security team,
including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and bring the team
in who won the conflict in Iraq in to turn this situation around, but
it’s going to be extremely difficult to do so

Let us emphasize a part of McCain’s comment:

bring the team in who won the conflict in Iraq

Sure. Use the guys that destroyed Iraq to save Iraq. Call them the “victors”. That is similar to McCain saying that he won the Vietnam War from the Hanoi Hilton.

Now, to the original blog post:

What’s Wrong Today:

Iraq is facing its gravest test since we invaded more than a decade ago. The Iraqi army pleaded “no contest” to Islamist insurgents, who have seized four cities and pillaged military bases and banks. The Guardian reported the extent of the Iraqi army’s defeat at the hands of militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS):

While they gained money and weapons, the most troubling part of the story was the desertion of the Iraqi military: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Clearly, there is no coherent government military capability in Iraq. The government has been unable to re-take Fallujah from ISIS in six months of trying. In addition, the local population does not seem willing to fight for their own territory. ISIS troops numbering around 800 took the city of Mosul with a population of three million, within a few hours.

More than 10 years after the United States invaded and two years after our withdrawal, the question of how Iraq fell so far, so fast is on the table.

After the US pullout, Mr. Maliki, the leader of a Shiite political party, promised to run a more inclusive government—to bring more Sunnis into the ministries, to bring more Sunnis from the Sons of Iraq militia into the national army, to settle property disputes in Kirkuk, to negotiate a formula on sharing oil revenue with Sunni districts, and much more. Then, Maliki backpedaled on these commitments, and has pursued policies designed to strengthen Shiites and marginalize Sunnis.

The Sunnis, excluded from the political process, have taken up arms as the route to power. In the process, they have formed alliances with Sunni jihadist groups, like ISIS, which has seized not just Mosul, but much of northern Iraq—on the principle that the enemy of their enemy is their friend.

Since Maliki had no interest in conciliatory politics, his Army simply folded when they came under attack, not because they weren’t equipped or trained to fight back, but because in many cases, they felt no allegiance to Maliki’s government; they had no desire to risk their lives for the sake of its survival.

International Implications

Given the ISIS role in the ongoing fighting in Syria, they might not want to waste soldiers and ammunition on a protracted battle in Iraq. It is one thing to win a city, it is an entirely different matter to hold several cities at the same time. the logistics get more difficult the farther the insurgents are from their original sources of supply.

Some of the ISIS militia stormed the Turkish consulate and kidnapped Turkish diplomats. Under international law, that amounts to an attack on Turkey, and it’s unlikely that the Turks will simply stay on the sidelines. Iran, which is Maliki’s main ally, has no interest in seeing Sunnis regain power in Baghdad.

We are witnessing a systemic breakdown in the Middle East. The war in Syria, which has been a proxy war between the region’s Sunnis and Shiites, has now expanded into Iraq. The violence will intensify, and the neighboring countries will be flooded with refugees (apparently, half a million have already fled Mosul), with few resources to house or feed them.

Depending on what happens in the next few weeks, or maybe even the next few days, we may be witnessing the beginning of either a new political order in the region or another swim in the geostrategic swamp, and its associated humanitarian disaster.

What is our responsibility?

When we withdrew, we said that we were leaving a competent military in Iraq, based on spending $ billions providing military equipment, and more than a decade in training the Iraqi military. Our invasion and subsequent occupation cost America more than a trillion dollars and the lives of more than 4,500 soldiers. It is also thought to have killed at least 100,000 Iraqis. Kevin Drum at MoJo writes:

Moving to the Syrian conflict, Mr. Obama’s decision not to arm the fringe Syrian groups looks better today than it did. Those weapons might have found their way into the hands of the ISIS fighters who are now in Mosul and Tikrit. Alternatively, the Saudi decision to send arms to fringe Syrian groups looks worse than ever.

Jim White at the indispensable Emptywheel captured this ironic screen shot from the NYT:

Juxtaposing these two headlines is more than an ironic coincidence, it demonstrates the thoughtless approach to policy by our neo-con captured government. Jim says:

And leave it to the Wall Street Journal’s Kenneth Pollack to make the first case for bombing:

Apparently Mr. Pollack sees no contradiction between promising the Iraqi government (and Mr. Maliki) that we will make air strikes on the Sunni insurgents if he first mends fences with said Sunnis. Mr. Pollack is at the Brookings Institution, one of the prime US “think” tanks. And the idea that the US can ride back into a country it has no clue about, except how that country and its resources can serve America’s own interests, and attempt to “save” it smacks of the worst of “American Exceptionalism”.

No wonder our foreign policy has been so successful.

When the Sunday morning TV bloviators ask: “Whose fault is it that Iraq may be lost to terrorism?”

Remind them that it’s our fault. We bought the neo-con lies about Iraq time and again.

Remind them that America’s chicken hawks, with their so-called military “expertise,” couldn’t see that intervening in civil wars is a mug’s game.

Remind them that you can’t build a nation that isn’t your own. You can’t control political outcomes in other countries, even with vast expenditures of blood and treasure.

Remind them that you can’t win when you put your big boots on the ground where they’re not wanted.

Some among us still buy the neo-con big lie. Next time you’re feeling “patriotic”, take the time to remember the original patriots in the 1700’s were not fools.

And the neo-cons? They remain dangerous fools.