Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki announced today that he won’t be stopped from seeking a third term. So efforts to form a government will now go on forever….
Maliki’s short-sighted, non-inclusive rule — pro-Shiite and anti-Sunni — created the conditions for ISIS to grab much of northern and western Iraq. His refusal to go makes it easier for ISIS to stay.
It’s easy to say we backed the wrong guy all these years, but really, people, they’re all the wrong guy.
So John Kerry met Maliki in Baghdad. Kerry pushed for Maliki to give more power to the Sunnis. Maliki pressed for Obama to do airstrikes.
Meanwhile ISIS marches on.
As Iraq disintegrates, Dems are blaming Bush and Republicans are blaming Obama. And the same arguments will take place when we finally leave Afghanistan and that God-forsaken place falls apart.
But as we apportion blame, let’s not forget the British and the French.
One of the huge problems we’ve had fighting in Afghanistan is that when we pursue the Taliban, they cross the border into Pakistan, where our ability to follow them is severely restricted. The Afghans have a save haven there because the people are Pashtun on both sides of the border. Rather than think of themselves as Afghans or Pakistanis, they think of themselves primarily as Pashtuns. A sensible border would have all the Pashtuns living in the same country, but noooooo. Back in 1893, a British colonial official created the Durand Line to separate British India from Afghanistan. When that part of India became Pakistan in 1947, the absurd border remained, irrationally dividing the Pashtuns.
As for Iraq, the British and French arbitrarily drew the Sykes-Picot line in 1916 (and implemented it after WWI), which falsely divided Ottoman Empire territory into Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, separating Sunni tribes with a purely artificial border. The Iraq side was for the British, and the Syrian-Lebanese side was for the French, with no regard for the Sunnis who should have been assigned to the same country. If ISIS weren’t welcomed and joined by Maliki-hating Sunnis as they come from Syria into Iraq, they wouldn’t have been able to make the swift conquest they have.
And don’t get me started on the Kurds, who have really gotten the short end of the stick. They are a distinct people, Muslim, but not Arab. They should have an independent Kurdistan (and maybe will when this mess get resolved) that unites the Kurds now divided among Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria.
I was reading about ISIS capturing a bunch of air force cadets who were fleeing their base outside Takrit, and letting the Sunni ones go, but keeping (killing?) the Shiite ones. And I was wondering how the hell they know who is Sunni and who is Shiite in a mixed setting like that.
I found a Slate article from 2006 by Daniel Engber that says it’s not that easy to tell. Some surnames are usually one or the other, but there’s been a lot of inter-marriage, so you can’t be sure. He says some first names are traditionally one or the other — Ali, Hassan, and Hussein are Shiite, while Omar, Abu Bakr, and Yazid are Sunni. But if a guy’s named Mohammed, you got nothing.
ISIS has now taken Tal Afar, a city northwest of Baghdad, near the Syrian border. Its defense had been led by one of Maliki’s top generals…
“We can work with Americans to end the insurgency int the Middle East.”
Senior Iranian official to Reuters
Way back in 2006, Joe Biden said we should carve up Iraq into three parts — Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd.
That’s what’s happening on the ground right now. If Maliki can hold Baghdad and the Shia provinces in the south (a huge if), how is he going to dislodge ISIS from the Sunni areas, how is he going to dislodge the Kurds from Kirkuk, which they’ve long claimed as their “capital,” and now completely control.
The Biden plan is being implemented de facto, if not de iure.
On his 90th birthday, let’s remember that George H. W. Bush kicked Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, but refused to kick him out of Baghdad. Bush knew Saddam was a monster, but he was a bulwark against Iran who ran a secular regime with a strong, educated middle class. Bush 41 knew that we were better off keeping Saddam, so long as that meant keeping him from expanding his borders and from gassing the Kurds.
What’s happening right this minute is the fault of Bush 43 for going in, not of Obama for getting out.
Iran may be about send 10,000 troops to Iraq to help fight ISIS. Shiite Iran and the Shiite Maliki regime are now best buds, especially when it comes to fighting Sunnis.
So theoretically, the U. S. could do air strikes in support of Iranian troops. Try to wrap your head around that one…
As the Washington Post describes Iraq as “on the brink of disintegration,” the Prez says “all options are on the table.” Based on our refusal to help Iraq the last few months, despite their ever-more-urgent pleas for airstrikes, it seems we’re going with the “let the whole thing go to Hell” option.
The Islamic extremists carving their “caliphate” out of Syria and Iraq, ISIS, are so radical and so violent that they were kicked out of Al Qaeda! Think about that…
Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki refused to reach out to his Sunni population, running a purely Shiite show, so now his Sunnis won’t fight for him, and the American weapons and armored vehicles they abandon as they flee are going to the jihadists. Your tax dollars at work… You can train and equip soldiers, as we very expensively did in Iraq, but if they have no loyalty to their government and won’t fight for it, what are you gonna do?
We have been unable to bring Afghanistan out of the seventh century. Now Iraq seems about to join them.
Bin Laden is dead — his vision, not so much.
Both the U. S. and our enemy Shiite Iran are on the same side in Iraq — supporting Shiite al-Maliki against Sunni Al Qaeda.
To a large extent, our frenemy Maliki brought his Anbar province troubles on himself by mistreating the Sunnis there and creating an opening for Al Qaeda. Now he’s struggling to get the Sunni tribal leaders to turn against Al Qaeda and turn back to him, hoping they hate his guts a little less.
The violence spreading out from Syria shows that the Mideast right now is just fighting the Sunni-Shiite battle that’s been going on since the seventh century. At this moment, it’s led by Saudi Arabia and Iran fanning proxy wars, just as the U. S. and Russia had their client states during the Cold War. The Sunni Saudis are trying to fight both the Shiites and Al Qaeda, a monster they helped create. Good luck with that.
We have to fight Al Qaeda and its affiliates, and we have to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, which would lead to Saudi Arabia’s getting nuclear weapons. Resolving the Sunni-Shiite thing? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Embattled Farmers 