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How Iraq Was Demolished By Washington's Intervention, Incoherence And Arrogance
Authored by Dahr Jamail, via Contra Corner blog,
For Americans, it was like the news from nowhere. Years had passed since reporters bothered to head for the country we invaded and blew a hole through back in 2003, the country once known as Iraq that our occupation drove into a never-ending sectarian nightmare. In 2011, the last U.S. combat troops slipped out of the country, their heads “held high,” as President Obama proclaimed at the time, and Iraq ceased to be news for Americans.
So the headlines of recent weeks – Iraq Army collapses! Iraq’s second largest city falls to insurgents! Terrorist Caliphate established in Middle East! – couldn’t have seemed more shockingly out of the blue. Suddenly, reporters flooded back in, the Bush-era neocons who had planned and supported the invasion and occupation were writing op-eds as if it were yesterday, and Iraq was again the story of the moment as the post-post-mortems began to appear and commentators began asking: How in the world could this be happening?
Iraqis, of course, lacked the luxury of ignoring what had been going on in their land since 2011. For them, whether Sunnis or Shiites, the recent unraveling of the army, the spread of a series of revolts across the Sunni parts of Iraq, the advance of an extremist insurgency on the country’s capital, Baghdad, and the embattled nature of the autocratic government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki were, if not predictable, at least expectable. And as the killings ratcheted up, caught in the middle were the vast majority of Iraqis, people who were neither fighters nor directly involved in the corrupt politics of their country, but found themselves, as always, caught in the vice grip of the violence again engulfing it.
An Iraqi friend I’ve known since 2003, living in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, emailed me recently. He had made it through the sectarian bloodletting of 2006-2007 in which many of his Sunni compatriots were killed or driven from the capital, and this is the picture he painted of what life is now like for him, his wife, and their small children:
“All the dangers faced by Iraqis from the occupation – arrests, torture, car bombs, and sectarian violence – those killings have become like a toy in comparison to what we are facing these days. Fighting has spread in all directions from the north, east, and west of Baghdad. Much of the fighting is between the government and Sunni insurgents who have suffered a lot from the injustice of Maliki’s sectarian government.”
As for his daily life, he described it this way:
“As a result of this fighting, we can’t sleep because of our fear of the uncertainty of the situation, and because of the random arrests of innocent Sunni people. Each day I awake and find myself in a very hard and bad situation and now am trying to think of any way I can to leave here and save my family. Most of my neighbors left back when it was easier to leave. Now, we have both the U.S. and Iran helping the Iraqi government, and this will only make the fighting that is going on across Iraq much worse.
“Life in Iraq has become impossible, and even more dangerous, and there is now no way to leave here. To the north, west, and east of Baghdad there is fighting, and with so many groups of Shiite militias in the south, it is not safe for us to go there because of the sectarianism that was never here before the invasion. The price for bus tickets has become very expensive and they are all booked up for months. So many Iraqi families and I are trapped in the middle now.”
“Every day, the Iraqi army is raiding homes and arresting many innocent people. So many dead bodies are to be found at the Baghdad morgue in the days following the mass arrests in Sunni areas.”
He concluded his email on a stark note, reminiscent of the sorts of things I regularly heard when I was in Iraq covering the brutal results of the U.S. occupation. “Horror, fear, arbitrary arrests, indiscriminate bombing, killing, an uncertain future – this is the new democratic Iraq.”
And don’t for a second think that this summer it’s just Sunni communities who are living in fear. Claims of massacres and other atrocities being carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the group spearheading the Sunni revolt across the northern and western parts of the country, abound along with well-documented accounts of their brutal tactics against Shiites.
In one incident, according to witnesses, ISIS forces kidnapped at least 40 Shia Turkmen, blew up three Shia mosques and another Shia shrine, and raided homes and farms in two Shia villages near the city of Mosul. And that’s just to start down a long list of horrors. Meanwhile, the sectarianism shredding the social fabric is being stoked further by the posting of images online that show at least 10 ancient Shiite shrines and mosques destroyed by ISIS fighters.
The Disintegration of Iraq
As for myself, I can’t claim to be surprised by the events of recent weeks. Back in March 2013, on a visit to the embattled Sunni city of Fallujah (twice besieged and largely destroyed by U.S. troops in the occupation years), I saw many signs of the genesis of what was to come. I was at one point on a stage there alongside half a dozen tribal and religious leaders from the area. Tens of thousands of enraged men, mostly young, filled the street below us, holding up signs expressing their anger toward U.S.-backed Prime Minister Maliki.
Having written about the myriad human rights abuses and violations Maliki’s regime was responsible for, I was intimately familiar with the way the bodies, dignity, and rights of much of the Sunni population in Fallujah’s province, al-Anbar, had been abused. That same month, I had, for instance, interviewed a woman who used the alias Heba al-Shamary and had just been released from an Iraqi prison after four grim years.
“I was tortured and raped repeatedly by the Iraqi security forces,” she told me. “I want to tell the world what I and other Iraqi women in prison have had to go through these last years. It has been a hell… I was raped over and over again. I was kicked and beaten and insulted and spit upon.” Heba, like so many Sunnis the Maliki regime decided to detain, torture, and sometimes execute, had been charged with “terrorism.”
That very month, Amnesty International released a report that highlighted what it called “a grim cycle of human rights abuses” in Iraq. When I was in Baghdad, it was common to hear Maliki referred to in many areas as “worse than Saddam [Hussein].”
In late 2012, the young among the politically disenfranchised Sunni population began to organize peaceful Arab Spring-style rallies against the government. These were met with brute force and more than a dozen demonstrators were killed by government security forces. Videos of this went viral on the Web stirring the already boiling tempers of youths desperate to take the fight for their rights to Baghdad.
“We demand an end to checkpoints surrounding Fallujah. We demand they allow in the press [to cover the situation]. We demand they end their unlawful home raids and detentions. We demand an end to federalism and gangsters and secret prisons.” This was what Sheikh Khaled Hamoud Al-Jumaili, a leader of the demonstrations, told me just before I went on stage that day. As we spoke, he clutched a photograph of one of his nephews killed by Maliki’s forces while demonstrating in the nearby city of Ramadi. “Losing our history and dividing Iraqis is wrong, but that and kidnapping and conspiracies and displacing people is what Maliki is doing.”
As I wrote at the time, the sheikh went on to assure me thatmany people in Anbar Province had stopped demanding changes in the Maliki government because they had lost hope. After years of waiting, no such demands were ever met. “Now, we demand a change in the regime instead and a change in the constitution. We will not stop these demonstrations. This one we have labeled ‘last chance Friday’ because it is the government’s last chance to listen to us.”
“What comes next,” I asked him, “if they don’t listen to you?”
“Maybe armed struggle comes next,” he replied without a pause.
Maliki’s response to the Fallujah protests would, in fact, insure that the sheikh’s prediction became the region’s future.
The adrenaline-pumping energy on stage and in the crowd that day mixed electric anticipation and anxiety with fear. All of this energy had to go somewhere. Even then, local religious and tribal leaders were already lagging behind their supporters. Keeping a lid on the seething cauldron of Sunni feeling was always unlikely. When a tribal sheikh asked the crowd for a little more time for further “diplomacy” in Baghdad, the crowd erupted in angry shouts, rushed the stage, and began pelting the sheikhs with water bottles and rocks.
In pockets of that crowd, now a mob, the ominous black flags of ISIS were already waving vigorously alongside signs that read “Iraqis did not vote for an Iranian dictatorship.” Enraged shouts of “We will now fight!” and “No more Maliki!” swept over us as we fled the stage, lest we be hit by those projectiles that caught the rage of the young, a rage desperate for a target, and open to recruitment into a movement that would take the fight to the Maliki regime.
Enter ISIS
Funded by Arabian Gulf petrodollars from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among other places, and for a long while supported, at least implicitly, by the Obama administration, radical Islamist fighters in Syria opposing Bashar al-Assad have been expanding in strength, numbers, and lethality for the last three years. This winter, they and their branches in Iraq converged, first taking Fallujah, then moving on to the spring and summer debacles across Sunni Iraq and the establishment of a “caliphate” in the territories they control in both countries.
It was hardly news that ISIS, a group even the original al-Qaeda rejected, had a strong presence in Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke of the situation defensively last fall in attempting to explain Washington’s increasingly controversial and confused policy on Syria, the rebels, and the regime of Bashar al-Assad they were trying to fell. He described the “bad guys” as radical fighters belonging to ISIS and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, calling them the lesser part of the opposition in that country, a statement that even then was beyond inaccurate. He went on to describe those “bad guys” as having “proven themselves to be probably the best fighters… the most trained and aggressive on the ground.”
Of course, Kerry claimed that the U.S. was only supporting the “good guys,” another convenient fiction of the moment.
Fast forward to just a few weeks ago: in a meeting with Syrian opposition leader Ahmad al-Jarba, Kerry proposed arming and training supposedly well-vetted “moderate” Syrian rebels to help take the battle to ISIS in Syria but also in Iraq. “Obviously, in light of what has happened in Iraq,” he said, “we have even more to talk about in terms of the moderate opposition in Syria, which has the ability to be a very important player in pushing back against [ISIS’s] presence and to have them not just in Syria, but also in Iraq.”
The confusion of this policy remains stunning: Washington hopes to use “moderate” Syrian rebels, in practice almost impossible to separate from the extreme Islamists, “in pushing back against” those very Islamists, while striking against the Assad regime which is supporting – with air strikes, among other things – the Maliki government which Washington has been arming and supporting in Iraq. The U.S. has already invested more than $25 billion in support for Maliki – at least $17 billion of which was poured into the Iraqi military. Clearly that was money not well spent as that military promptly collapsed, surrendering a string of cities and towns, including Tal Afar and Mosul, when ISIS and other Sunni insurgents came knocking.
More aid and personnel are now on the way from Washington. The Obama administration already admits to sending at least an extra 750 Marines and Special Operations troops into Iraq, along with missile-armed drones and Apache helicopters. It is now pushing hard to sell Iraq another 4,000 Hellfire missiles. The Pentagon insists its troops in Baghdad are either guarding the huge U.S. embassy or serving in an “advisory” capacity to the Iraqis, but is also claiming that its forces need “flexibility” in order to carry out their missions. As a result, there are already plans for U.S. pilots to fly those Apache attack helicopters there.
While Washington might be at odds with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the crisis in Ukraine, the Obama administration is undoubtedly breathing a sigh of relief that Russian military aid, including fighter planes, is now flowing into Baghdad. Blurring opaque political alliances further, Iran has supplied Iraq with ground attack jets, has drones carrying out reconnaissance missions over the country, and Iranian Kurds could be joining the fight on the ground.
Considering all these twists and turns of the Iraqi situation, political analyst Maki al-Nazzal shared these thoughts with me, which are increasingly typical of Sunni opinion: “Iraq is still suffering from the U.S. occupation’s sins and now self-operating to remove the cancer the U.S. planted in its body. Iraqi nationalists and Sunni Islamists have had enough of being wasted through 11 years of direct and indirect occupation and so revolted to correct by guns what was corrupted by wrongful politics.”
Meanwhile, the ongoing crisis has sent the government in Baghdad into free-fall just as the opportunistic Kurds of northern Iraq have called for a referendum in the next two months to address a long-fostered desire to become an independent country. Given all of this, hopes for any kind of Sunni-Shia-Kurdish “unity” government that could save the country from collapse have been repeatedly dashed. Making matters worse, with thousands of Iraqis being slaughtered every month and the country coming apart at the seams, even the Shiites in the country’s parliament seem deadlocked. “Things are moving faster than the politicians can make decisions,” a senior Shiite member of parliament told a reporter.
No wonder the Iraqi army won’t stand its ground when facing ISIS fighters, who are more than willing to die for their cause. What exactly is it to die defending? And it’s not just army troops who are refusing to put their lives on the line for Nouri al-Maliki. Powerful Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq’s volatile Anbar Province are also refusing to fight for Maliki, too. In a recent interview, Sheikh Hatem al-Suleiman, head of the Dulaimi tribe, insisted that Maliki was more dangerous than the ISIS fighters, adding, “I believe that Maliki is responsible for ISIS coming to Iraq.”
Washington’s man in Baghdad for so long, Maliki himself now adds to the crisis by refusing to budge, no matter the pressure from his former patrons and Shiite religious leaders.
The Nightmare of Ordinary Iraqis
The disintegration of Iraq is the result of U.S. policies that, since 2003, have been strikingly devoid of coherence or any real comprehension when it comes to the forces at play in the country or the region. They have had about them an aura of puerility, of “good guys” versus “bad guys,” that will leave future historians stunned. Worst of all, they have generated a modern-day Middle Eastern Catch-22 in which all sides are armed, funded, and supported directly or indirectly by Washington or its allies.
Meanwhile, ISIS and other Sunni insurgent groups have effectively tapped into the tens of thousands of angry young men I saw in Fallujah last year and are reportedly enjoying significant popular support (as, in some cases, the best of a series of terrible options) in many of the towns and cities where they have set up shop.
In all of this, the nightmare for ordinary Iraqis has only been accentuated. I recently received an email from a friend in Fallujah, a city now occupied by ISIS after having been brutally shelled by the Iraqi military earlier in the year. At that time, hundreds were killed and even Fallujah’s main hospital was hit. Tens of thousands of people in the city, including my friend, had to flee for their lives. He has now been a refugee for months and summed up his life this way:
“Words cannot explain what we are suffering now. I do not believe what is happening to us. Imagine a life lived in permanent fear, with shortages of all-important services like electricity, water supply, fuel, and food in the very hot Iraqi summer and during the fasting month of Ramadan.
“The most important part of the whole story is that all of these tragedies are happening – and let me say with sadness, are happening while we are now refugees and deprived of our houses and belongings. Fleeing Maliki’s bombardment, we travelled to Anah City [northwest of Fallujah and closer to the Syrian border] seeking safety, but now Anah has become unsafe and was attacked twice by Syrian helicopters, which killed five Fallujan civilian refugees. Everything in our life is sad and difficult. We are under the control of senseless criminals.”
As Iraq’s disintegration into darkness progresses, it sickens me to think of all the Iraqis I met and became friends with, who have since been killed, disappeared, or have become refugees. What is left of Iraq, this mess that is no longer a country, should be considered the legacy of decades of U.S. policy there, dating back to the moment when Saddam Hussein was in power and enjoyed Washington’s support. With Maliki, it has simply been a different dictator, enjoying even more such support (until these last weeks), and using similarly barbaric tactics against Iraqis.
Today, Washington’s policies continue in the same mindless way as more fuel is rushed to the bonfire that is incinerating Iraq.
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<- the Bush-era neocons ->
There's no denying this, but the article makes no mention of the current crop of neocons. Much to my dismay, Obummer has carte blanche to blow the Sh*t out of whomever he wants and authors like this give him a pass.
DaddyO
this article was very discouraging
+10
Dahr makes himelf look stupid by repeating Socialist Semite Democrat media propaganda and namecalling....
The correct term is neoCOMMUNIST, there is nothing conservative about these people.....but keep parroting the mainstream media if you like looking like a gullible ass.
Shit hits the fan...shitstorm
Let's see, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, working on Syria... The yanks have been busy since Barry came into office...
We are under the control of senseless criminals.
That part feels familiar. How long until the rest of it is also familiar-feeling?
3.2 million barrels per day
Nothing.
Else.
Matters.
As long as 3.2 mbpd flow, no one will care about all this.
The spice must flow, Iraq, Palestine, Ukraine, passenger jets no matter...fucking psychopaths.
Destabilization is the methodology, much like what they are doing in the US, keep breaking up people into smaller and smaller groups, box them up, tie a bow around them and destroy them in due course after they have outlived their usefulness.
It has been the MO of these principality' s and powers since the beginning.
Exactly, what they are trying to avoid is a united arab country that is united against the US. And they likely think it'll spread, a view similar to how they viewed communism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqaERLjJEhI
Precisely... Just look at the EU experiment and now the open-border policy in the US... They want us to all to fuck each other for the next 100 years so we will all the same color and speak the same lingo...
Obama deserves abother Nobel Prize for this
Who lost Iraq? The fucking idiots who started the war there. Can't blame Obozo for this one. There's enough other shit to pin on him. Yeah, leaving 10,000 American troops over there would have stopped the stuff going on now. Obozo saved 10,000 lives by taking all of our troops out.
Let's get a battalion of neo-con chicken hawks over there. I'm sure they can make the hellhole safe for democracy.
sarc off
Can't blame Obama? Please, even a 'tard can string the dots together on this one...
Obama pushes airstrikes in E. Ukraine, Russia responds w high tech surface to air missiles, now 1000s innocence die including 300 in tragic air accident. So we are on our way for another conflict that will create millions of refuges and 100,000+ dead so protect America's values?
"With Maliki, it has simply been a different dictator, enjoying even more such support (until these last weeks), and using similarly barbaric tactics against Iraqis"
Care to qualify that teaser bite ?
copy article, wait 1 year, change irak by ukraine, post.
( this method is ok also with libya, syria, and all the countries that CIA will gently give you on the list since 2001 on simple request)
Why don't we just renmae the country the Council on Foreign Relations or Bilderburbia
Better yet.. Why don't we just glass the whole fucking pile of shit and get it over with for good.
'genies in a bottle'? sorry, my bad... just a tasteless one-liner i heard long ago...
A little bird says that the nukes don't work any more...
CFRaq? CIAraq? USAraq?
For a trillion FeRNs, they should at least get naming rights and a banana flag atop their billion-FeRN "embassy".
The joy of Neo Pax Obama in Iraq is celebrated in Hell.
Gotta be a way to blame the Joos for this....
Got it: Maliki is a zionist puppet
Better: The sunni-shia conflict is an al Ciada and Mossad operation to gain control of Iraq's oil.
Best: Mohammed was a (gasp!) Yid operative
You're such a douche.
Iraq was destablized to appease Israel.
Well, if ya think about it. Iraq was destabilized with the hope it would spread like a cancer into Iran.
Israel feared Saddam's Iraq especially before Gulf war one.Then as Iraq was rearming Clinton destroyed the new cache of weapons with a missle attack and bombing.
All at the behest of strange bedfellows, Israel and Saudi Arabia...
I agree that Iraq was either designed or allowed by the U.S. to fail but moar for the sake of giving Iran back a serious threat on its western border in the form of ISIS to distract and deter Iran from threatening Werstern governments including Israel.
It also helps the Saudis and other oil producers by jacking up the price of oil.
Even Putin must love it for how higher oil prices help fund his military expansion.
But we're fucked because of it again and what a horrible waste of our troops and expense fighting for that shit pile.
Iraq was destablized to save the petro-dollar....period.
The Socialist Semite Democrat Meda calls them neocons because JEW BASTARDS made them look like Jew haters.....
The Neocons were/are about 80% Jewish while Jews make up about 2% of the USA population. Off the top of my head I can name off the main ones and they're all Jewish. ....Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Elliott Abrams, Irving and William Kristol, Adam Shulsky, Richard Perle, Dov Zakheim, Philip Zelikow. the list goes on.
Seems pretty clear to me that their first loyalty is to Israel.
The US's dismal foreign policy record did not begin with the current adminstration. The Obama admistration has been consistent however - consistently wrong about the ways of the world and the nature of the Arabs.
Well on this one, Obama is as much to blame as Jimmy Carter, Ronnie Raygun, NWO 1st, Clinton, NWO 2nd, upto and including Obama.
Obama ran for president with all that "hope & change" crap then didn't do shit. Hell, he even won the peace prize just for saying he would!
Gitmo is still open, Iraq is still a shithole, he doubled down on the "war on terra" instead of prosecuting W & Cheney.... it just goes on and on. No change, no hope, just twice as bad.
Now the next election cycle starts, the "hope and change" begins again, but its so bad now another double down will certainly destroy the universe.
Such a wonderful way to start the weekend.
Yes, the Bushbama regime has been a seamless continuum.
Nothing changes under the tyranny of the ruling elephant-jackass party, except the Kenyan Usurper (K.U.) has accelerated the pace of destruction.
¿Tienes tiranía?Could they, would they take it back ?
“Life in Iraq has become impossible, and even more dangerous, and there is now no way to leave here. To the north, west, and east of Baghdad there is fighting, and with so many groups of Shiite militias in the south, it is not safe for us to go there because of the sectarianism that was never here before the invasion. The price for bus tickets has become very expensive and they are all booked up for months. So many Iraqi families and I are trapped in the middle now.”
“Every day, the Iraqi army is raiding homes and arresting many innocent people. So many dead bodies are to be found at the Baghdad morgue in the days following the mass arrests in Sunni areas.”
Recite these words and get them firmly planted in your mind.
Cause when the Fed lowers the boom and "pulls the HFT plug" on the charade as the 99% lose their shirt which is the only "temple" that matters to them -the images being described here will be the unpleasant reminder of what will be happening in your neighborhood as well...
Only difference is when it happens here it will ALL be well deserved!
As for his daily life, he described it this way:
“As a result of this fighting, we can’t sleep because of our fear of the uncertainty of the situation, and because of the random arrests of innocent Sunni people. Each day I awake and find myself in a very hard and bad situation and now am trying to think of any way I can to leave here and save my family. Most of my neighbors left back when it was easier to leave. Now, we have both the U.S. and Iran helping the Iraqi government, and this will only make the fighting that is going on across Iraq much worse.
Might I suggest, save, sell, beg, borrow, steal; Get plane tickets to Mexico, preferably northern Mex. and cross into southern U.S.
It seems we have a new, more friendly immigration policy here these days.
Oh, PS Keep in mind, that would put you in a country that, in no small part, helped to Fu&% yours up for you.
Only difference is when it happens here it will ALL be well deserved!
Add to that self contained and well deserved! The elegance will come in the form of like people destroying each other and themselves for all the wrong things that they covet.
Just like the Government they serve!
Oh come on. All of this shit is straight out of some template geared to elicit sympathy. It was all written to move you to tears. Just like we were supposed to feel sorry for all the children out of Central America until we found out about all the diseases and the fact that the fast majority of them were adult males.
Yes, everything is the USA' fault. Here take all my money and possessions that way we won't have to worry about you coming back and trying to steal anything else for your boo hoo cause.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBtK9I1q_Eg
Much obliged.
Proof positive the Langley whores are alive and well in McLean Virginia and will say or do anything for the Almighty USD.
Ironic when you heard the CIA rep not long ago telling the infamous story that you can get a "Press Whore" to do anything for you including a "blow job" for less than a two star hooker!
Now get back to work you two!
What?
fubar
The prolonged, lost Iraq war illustrated how weak, unorganised and brain dead the American military has become.
The world now does not fear America the least bit.
Good job, Bush, Cheney!!!
I still believe the U.S. military would win, unless there's a quantum leap forward in enemy tech, in a play-to-win scenario.
Nobody ever wins the "police action" crap that passes for wars these days, unless the goal is to completely destabilize the country. If that's the case, then job well done!
Same senseless policies destroying iraq.....wasnt that the plan all along
3.2 million bpd
Stop thinking about anything else because nothing else matters.
The usual ethno-mafia psychopaths and war profiteering crew, with help from their "leftist" cohorts in the corporate media, lobbies, government, and funded by their central banking cartels. Of course, all the traitorous shabbos goy sellouts in congress are just as complicit!
http://zfacts.com/node/297
http://www.ahavat-israel.com/eretz/future
http://www.monabaker.com/pMachine/more.php?id=A2298_0_1_0_M
"Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization."
So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.
That's the part that should make it obvious this isn't a natural phenomenon. The widely intermarried, anti-zionist, Arab population is inexplicably going to divide itself into 2 Muslim sects. All other sects and religions, including a million or so Christians, will be disappeared since they don't fit the propaganda narrative created by morons who see the world as a "Risk" board. The zionist friendly Kurds won't need to have this catastrophe imposed on them.
Yet thanks to 10 years of propaganda most Americans still think the empire is valiantly trying to hold Iraq together.
Interesting theory.
I was under the impression that the Muslim sects did not inter-marry, and that was one of the major reasons why they always fight to try to separate into their own ethnic enclaves.
I'm probably wrong. I just assumed they were trying to break out of the generic national boundaries imposed on them.
That the Muslims/Arabs don't intermarry is definitely wrong. If they wanted to segregate themselves it would've been done centuries ago. They don't like the national borders because they were created by the colonial powers, but it's not a religious issue. The Kurds certainly want their own country, but the Arabs do not want to be forced into hundreds of Gazas.
Here is the same author from 6+ years ago https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/168/37459.html
It may be worthwhile to consider that prior to the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq there had never been open warfare between the two groups and certainly not a civil war. In terms of organization and convention, Iraqis are a tribal society and some of the largest tribes in the country comprise Sunni and Shia. Intermarriages between the two sects are not uncommon either.
Soon after arriving in Iraq in November 2003, I learned that it was considered rude and socially graceless to enquire after an individual's sect. If in ignorance or under compulsion I did pose the question the most common answer I would receive was, "I am Muslim, and I am Iraqi." On occasion there were more telling responses like the one I received from an older woman, "My mother is a Shia and my father a Sunni, so can you tell which half of me is which?" The accompanying smile said it all.
Large mixed neighborhoods were the norm in Baghdad. Sunni and Shia prayed in one another's mosques. Secular Iraqis could form lifelong associations with others without overt concern about their chosen sect.
Fucking idiots on this ZH site have no clue. Zfacts is as good an indictment of the GOP TEA Shits I've ever seen. Now if we can only get it to clearly connect those in the D party who helped enable the NEO Cons it would help towards a political platform which might change our country, or at least starts. But the ZHers here will just keep supporting (votes and $$) the GOP and Kock assholes and think they're keeping us safe from Obummer.
PNAC's wet dreams come true - the US has taken out how many countries on their hit list? Wasn't the whole neo-con intent the destabilization of the Middle East - Balkanizing the region into small insignoifocant or irrelevant states so the US (and Isrrael) could dominate the region?
Doesn't matter to these aggogant SOB's how many lives are squandered while they plal global chess.
Shameful and a crime against humanity. Where is the world court and why aren't those duplicitous individuals on trial?
The Obama administration already admits to sending at least an extra 750 Marines and Special Operations troops into Iraq, along with missile-armed drones and Apache helicopters.
Perhaps they're also sending some more cars? http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2005/10/02/us_car_theft_rings_...
Investigators said they are comparing several other cases where vehicles evidently stolen in the United States wound up in Syria or other Middle East countries and ultimately into the hands of Iraqi insurgent groups -- including Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian-born Abu Musab Al Zarqawi.
And to think a Nobel Peace prize was given to a community organizer of limited intellect or ability. What a disgrace that organization has become.
The elite set an example in the Middle East with the Iraq invasion because they had the gall (cough) to sell their own oil for fiat other than the petro-dollar. Incoherence had nothing to do with it.
So, they kill the leader and insert their puppet.....the US government arrogantly calls this "nation building". The "weapon of mass destruction" was the killing of the Dollar....not people (who they care
nothing about).
Sectarian violence is the fault of the US when these 'sects' go back before the US even existed?
Oh, yes, things are much more wonderful now. Just look over there, another mass slaughter by the right US sponsored sect.
I think the inference is that under Saddam it was at least livable for many (granted, not for everyone).
Exactly. And the US prior to that usualy supported stabilty and right wing autocratic rule, however venal, over democracy, socialism and uncertainty which might run counter to US aims. The aims being whatever the prevelant paranoia dictated, you know, Cubans, Russians, Chinese, Grenadians, Panamanians, European lefties, assorted rag-heads, Vietnamese, dominoes....
Yep. Nice, stable sales for the MIC. Most of time they could sell to both sides. Shias and Sunnis have been good customers, off and on, for a hundred years now!
Iraq had never had a civil war before and there'd never been a 'sectarian civil war' anywhere. Muslims, Christians, Yazidis, Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds etc were intermarried. The society was divided on tribal (large family units) lines, not religious ones. The empire wants to change that for the Arab population, but not the Kurds.
I have never understood the rationale for invading Iraq after 9/11. The collapse of all stability in the country was the entirely foreseeable result of that pointless war. How many trillions of dollars spent? How many lives lost? And for what, a few purple fingers?
America is headed into the history books with perhaps the most insane blowoff of imperial overreach ever attempted.
Spread this message to the young and impressionable. Don't let them enlist in the war machine.
Without soldiers, there is no war.
@GooseShtepping Moron
You are right.
"Couldn't we have saved 10 years, thousands of lives and billions of dollars to get to this predictable outcome?" YES, and you can add the loss of friendships and confidence all around the world ...
Remember also how much hate FRANCE got in the US for NOT wanting to contribute in this dirty Irak war. The whole dumbass "LIBERTY FRIES" , the “cheese-eating surrender MONKEYS” things – all kind of silly jokes - still continuing, even in ZH …. Five years of Anti-French slander and vilification was thus thrust by the White House, the administration, members of Congress, governors and by lackeys in the media (like Fox News or Murdoch Press).
May all Americans remember what they did, and how it speaks volumes about how are treated dissent, opinion and opposition.
It has been said that the Fed easy money policy has been THE reason for the complacent markets.
I don't think it is the ONLY reason.
I think the markets reflect Obama's failed approach to foreign policy:
Obama ignores serious world events = the markets ignore serious world event.
The last time the VIX spiked significantly (before the plane downed on July 17th) was when Putin crossed into Crimea.
Every one was scared that the US would react. When Obama didn't react (meals-on-wheels is NOT a serious reaction), markets ignored risk.
Every other serious geopolitical event, Obama has not reacted with anything significant: Iraq/ISIS/Israel
VIX was slammed because markets were confident that US would not be affected.
Then the plane was shot down and the VIX spiked BECAUSE everyone worried that NOW the US reaction would be serious.
The next day, Friday July 18th, instead of giving a Reagan-like speech, Obama again downplayed the seriousness of what had happened and markets soared.
The markets will only react if Obama's inaction produces a situation that puts the US at risk (i.e. ISIS takes over US embassy because Obama still has some staff stationed there).
Iraq is part of the greater Israel. So is Syria, Jordan, Half of Egypt, half of Saudi Arabia.
They must take this land by religious edict, only Jews will be allowed to live there.
ISIS is clearing the land for them.
I just realized yesterday that the same people who are against illegal invaders on our borders support Israel doing the same to the Palesinians. Then in 1948 they declared it theirs legally.
NYC will be Gaza and San Francisco the West bank.
Not exactly...
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hireview/content.php?type=article&issue=spring01/&name=myth
stop 'shrooms, seriously.
Shut off all the money and weapons from all sources.
No way!
The MIC must get paid!
Dolla dolla bill yo.
Why doesn't someone make a flag for Washington D.C. and then Americans and the whole world can feel good about burning it.
It's all in the name of democracy and freedom though.
you know this is why wer are there http://highrisesafetynyc.org/ . There is only one question in my mind watch this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ca1HsC6MH0 Can we have Neurenberg trials before tens of milions or even hundreds of millions are caught up in Democide. As long as carpartmentlize and make secret treaty this happens..
Quayle, Gore and Stockdale debate. "who am I why am I here" we have really moved to the dark side of power abuse.
http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2014/07/14/508645-the-unfolding-of-yinons...
http://mycatbirdseat.com/2014/04/a-century-of-deceit-iraq-the-world-wars...
The premise is wrong. Chaos and Balkanization are all part of the neocon/Zionist (Oded Yinon) plan.
Zbig et al. Always argued that Russia should be targeted first, and it seems there are competing, but overlapping geopolitical-military strategies at work. However, in terms of raw financial, political, and media and banking power, it seems clear that transnational Likudnik Zionism has significant representation and influence in the US, UK, Canada, France, Australia - and Ukraine.
I am starting to see ISIS as freedomfighters against centralized government. What do you guys think.
i think you are too bright to be talked to, excuse me i dont have my sunglasses.
Evidence suggests that the governments of the US, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Ukraine, Russia, EU, et cetera, do not have our best interests in mind. They don't want to see a crowd sourced, local government succeeding and showing the world's people that centralized government is superfluous to citizen happiness.
I am suspect of the MSM trying to sell me that ISIS is the boogeyman.
ISIS are islamist nutjobs.
Hard to say, they are after all, religous nutters...but then so is the current Iraq government which we support, but then we suppport the terorists as well with weapons and training, buggered if I know
Iraqis need to walk in the steps of Jesus. Their Godless beliefs are the reason for their troubles. Look around the world. Muslims bring grief unto themselves.
Really? Seems to me Iraq was way better off before we showed up...................
Forgot the /sarc?
maybe..or religious fruitcake.
Basically the oil curse.
Dahr has the DNC plugged into his ass...
How Iraq Was Demolished By Washington's Intervention, Incoherence And ArroganceExcuse me but far more true and happening in real time......
How America Was Demolished By Washington's Intervention, Incoherence And ArroganceNO BULLSHIT..............IT'S FUCKING GOING DOWN.
Iraq, and Operation "Iraqi Freedom" was one of the new centuries great war crimes. Now most, if not all, Americans will argue that to the bitter end. It was no crime, it was us defending ourselves or making a better world, they have all brands of excuse for America's right to invade and occupy Iraq. I remember the mood well, all the yellow ribbons and flags on cars, if my neighbors could not be with the lead armored divisions crossing the border, they could contribute with their show of patriotism.
Now after all the deaths, costs and total fucking disaster that Iraq is, an actual homeland for the worst terrorists in the world. After that outcome, most will still defend the invasion as an American right. Just as the coup in Ukraine was an American right, and the mounting piles of bodies there is our right. As if Kiev does not fund this war with our money. Now the plane disaster added hundreds, and a just realsed report shows Kiev's punishment attacks using artillery on settlements has killed over three hundred civilians in the last 7 weeks according to international observers.
I wonder, do those fakes in Washington, the Neocon movement that controls American military, spy and foreign policy. I wonder why we let them do this? I am told, and I read, that for me to be a true patriot to America, I must shut up and support Washington in their Iraq, Syrian, Libyan and now Ukrainian adventures. They use their controlled media to push the idea that we are all traitors and terrorists if we do not support the control of the Neocons in Washington. They use CNN and FOX to tar any American who does not back Neoconservative war mongering. They did it with Iraq over a decade ago, they do it with Ukraine now. When in fact, the neocons are a group who our founding fathers and the US constitution would brand as traitors and criminals and foreign agents and drive them out. Such is not the state of America today. Their media, their public education and their thought control seems to have made warmonger zoombies of most people.
it is time to crowd-fund with bitcoin private armies who will defend the victims from the wanton agression of the state. start in occupied east Ukraine.
"There is pride before the fall" King James Bible
Blowback is a bitch, USA. The CIA is using all of us as human shields so
they can hide like the cowards they really are. Sooner or later the CIA
will have to step up to the plate and fight to their deaths. It a matter of time not a matter of "if" and you can run CIA but you can't hide.
OCCUPY CIA - OCCUPY EVERYTHING
Most Americans are so brainwashed smug, insensitive and indifferent to the ongoing insanity of war thrust on the millions of Iraq people over the last 11 years. Most Americans feel no danger, responsibility or remorse for harboring the war criminals that created the “inside job” attacks on 9/11/01 and orchestrated us into national debt with a treasonous “terrorist war” with Iraq.
The target of “open border” illegal immigration is to destroy our American Sovereignty and American Independence with government and NGO funded and orchestrated attacks on our borders with the use of illegal immigrants. The second objective is to create civil unrest and chaos which the criminals in Washington specialize in. The war criminals in Washington are bringing the “hot” war home,
All true! Sadly, every word is fact. No person can explain the open border policy, no government Republican or Democrat will do anything but keep the entire border wide open. Reason for this?
The UN's program "oil for food" was a front to quota iraq oil and sent the remainder out the back door to Total (paris), the germans and the russians.
Bush moved in to cut this shit off and move the corps in.
This was merely a shift in wealth transfers - it may have hurt or helped iraq, but that's really irrelevant.
And it's not the oil - it's about the use of the USD when transacting oil.
You can take oil from the US, so long as you transact it in USD.