Re-starting Iraq war, immoral and stupid

This video from the USA is called Cost Of Iraq & Afghanistan Wars Is Absolutely Staggering.

Same old, same old in Iraq

Friday 22nd August 2014

Calls for deeper intervention in Iraq follow a depressingly familiar pattern, says SOLOMON HUGHES

THE murder of US journalist James Foley is fuelling calls for more Western “action” in Iraq against Isis.

But the biggest enthusiasts for “action” are often the haziest about the hows and whys of “intervention.” They don’t like looking too hard at “intervention” because once you do you see that Isis success grows from the last “intervention” in 2003.

The success of the sectarian, bloody Islamic State is a function of the sectarian and bloody weakness of the Iraqi state. Isis’s Mad Max-style gangs only hold ground because the British-US intervention in Iraq so fundamentally broke down every element of the Iraqi nation.

The Iraqi state is weak, corrupt and sectarian because that is the way the allies wanted it and that is how they made it. This isn’t just about I-hate-to-say-I-told-you-so. It is about understanding that the last such “intervention” in Iraq opened the door for Isis, so a repeat intervention won’t help. What was poison in 2003 won’t become medicine in 2014.

Many did warn that the 2003 Iraq invasion would lead to chaos, failure and sectarian bloodshed. The occupiers didn’t so much ignore these warnings as use them as a blueprint. It is hard to overstate how the war and the postwar occupation gutted Iraq. The occupiers systematically weakened the country to make it easier to hold.

During the 2003 allied invasion, US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz said that oil revenues meant there was “a lot of money to pay for this,” and that “we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.”

The US grabbed hold of those oil revenues — especially a huge cash pile called the Development Fund for Iraq — and handed them over to politically connected US firms. It wanted the Iraqi state economically weak so that companies like Halliburton and Bechtel could get billions of Iraqi dollars to run their electricity, water and hospital services.

They did such a bad job that Iraqis still cannot rely on regular electricity, water or sewage. This wore away at the loyalty of the people to the state but was just the beginning of the breakdown of Iraq.

The occupiers wanted the Iraqi army and police weak, so they would face no challenge. US overlord Paul Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army and day-to-day policing was replaced by a patchwork of Western security contractors, who bled more money out of Iraq in return for more chaos.

A new army was rebuilt — again by Western contractors like DynCorp — an army that was expensive but pathetically unable to resist Isis. Instead they deserted, handing Isis their heavy weapons, creating a jihadi army that has tanks, cannons and armoured personnel carriers.

Discontent with the British-US occupiers wasting their oil money soon led to both Sunni and Shia insurgencies in the north and south. The occupiers then took a very dark turn, deliberately encouraging sectarian division to divide and rule Iraq.

When the occupiers finally allowed elections in 2005, they cynically organised them on a “single constituency” vote designed to increase sectarian tension, especially after a full-on military attack on the Sunni city of Fallujah.

The allies held power but only by establishing a sectarian, Shia-oriented government. After the election the US occupiers pursued the “Salvador Option” of setting up sectarian death squads like the Wolf Brigade to murder Sunni “enemies” and ethnically cleanse Baghdad neighbourhoods.

What makes Isis successful is not the hard core of jihadis but the fact that they can get support from ordinary Iraqis. It seems shocking that these people will support a vicious and illegitimate sectarian army but they already view the Iraqi government as vicious, illegitimate and sectarian. US air strikes will not change their minds.

Some in the West complain that outgoing Iraqi president Maliki’s corrupt, sectarian and violent government alienated Sunnis and drove them into the arms of Isis. But Maliki was only doing what he was shown to do by the US occupiers.

Throwing in air strikes helps Western governments feel they can “project power.” But they just add to the sectarian dynamic, where Iraq never finds any stability, just a series of ever changing military confrontations.

The country needs a popular and effective Iraqi state, which cannot be delivered by Western military force. Security isn’t just about bombs, it is about a state that can help its citizens enjoy the basics of electricity, water and housing.

Those people who wilfully forget the lessons of Iraq have plenty of other examples to learn from.

Supporters of a new intervention in Iraq say this is a new kind of war, different from Iraq 2003. It is mostly from the air, with just a few boots on the ground.

But the intervention in Libya was supposed to be different from Iraq. Now all Westerners are officially told to “flee” Libya. The Libyans themselves have to stay put and suffer. The intervention in northern Pakistan was also supposed to be “different,” with targeted drone strikes taking out the Pakistani Taliban. Instead, these strikes have made the Taliban stronger.

There is a pattern to these Western military interventions —short-term relief with long-term chaos and agony. But the eternal sunshine of their spotless minds means that the laptop bombardiers never see this pattern.

If air strikes aren’t the answer, what is?

The hard truth is that there may not be an easy answer. There may not be a very happy ending to the ugly story of what the allies did to Iraq. We might be seeing a kind of unravelling, like that which followed the Vietnam war. At least then the warmongers recognised a responsibility to some displaced people.

In the ’70s and ’80s Britain accepted tens of thousands of Vietnamese “boat people” and the US took hundreds of thousands.

The West should make similar offers to similar numbers of Iraqis and offer genuine financial assistance to Iraq and the frontline states. Unfortunately the modern “liberal” intelligentsia now thinks about launching air strikes long before they think about receiving refugees or giving economic support.