Iraq Archives - the patient investor

July 21, 2015

“We should be ashamed”…Isis could have been ‘nipped in the bud’ four years ago

The rise of extremist terror group Islamic State (Isis) could have been avoided if the UK began attacks on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2013, according to two former defence chiefs.

“It’s a great shame, something that we should be ashamed of, that we could have nipped this problem in the bud four years ago, but failed to do so,” said Lord David Richards, a former general and the UK’s chief of defence staff from 2011 to 2013 under Prime Minister David Cameron.

“….if anything encouraged Isis at that point, it was that decision,” said Lord George Robertson, Nato secretary general from 1999 to 2004, and UK defence secretary from 1997 to 1999. “It was that fact of a failure of will on the part of the Western powers,” he added, that also encouraged Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Crimea in 2013.

….”We are our own worst enemy. We simply ignore problems,” said Robertson, who urged the UK’s politicians to do more to convince the public why the government needs to take military action. “Unless people are convinced there are things worth fighting for, then we’ll be in trouble….”

Reminds me of:

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” ~ from the film adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Often misattributed to Edmund Burke who wrote: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

October 21, 2014

Get Ready for Iraq War IV

Retired army officer John A. Nagl writes:

The United States is now at war in Iraq for the third time in my lifetime, and after being in the middle of the first two I’m planning to sit this one out.

The first Iraq war was necessary and conducted well, as wars go; the second was unnecessary and conducted poorly at first, but ended up in a reasonable place given what a fiasco it had been at the start. This third war was entirely preventable, caused by a premature departure of U.S. troops after the second. Although it’s too soon to say how it will turn out, it is not too early to say that unless we get the endgame right, the United States will fight yet another war in Iraq before too long.

Iran Didn’t Create ISIS. We Did | The Diplomat

From Ben Reynolds:

….No one is innocent in the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars, but Iran is not primarily responsible for the current state of affairs. The U.S. and its allies destabilized Iraq and Syria in turn, creating safe havens for extremists that previously did not exist. U.S. allies provided the material support that allowed ISIS and groups like it to become threats to the entire region, despite lacking any substantial popular base in Syria and Iraq. It is not unreasonable for Iran and Hezbollah to fight against these groups, which murder and enslave Shia and other religious minorities. Their actions conceivably fall under one of the West’s favorite principles of international law: the duty to protect.

June 28, 2014

Desperately seeking moderate Syrian rebels | Threat Matrix

By Lisa Lundquist:

Following the news that the Obama administration, in a sudden about-face, is asking Congress for $500 million to train and equip “vetted” members of the “moderate” Syrian opposition, The Associated Press yesterday published a list, headlined “Syrian rebels likely to receive US aid.” The list raises more questions than it answers — two of the listed groups have been designated by the US as terrorist organizations….

June 26, 2014

The tragic record of American policy in the Middle East | BillMoyers.com

Investigative journalist Charles Lewis, author of 935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity tells Bill Moyer:

An outrageous thing happened. We lost $2 trillion. More than 100,000 people died. Folks are going to be maimed for life in the tens of thousands… And no one has ever acknowledged that this [Iraq] was a war on a lark. It was a complete war of choice, because a certain little faction wanted to do it and they orchestrated it… Did they make statements that weren’t true? The answer is yes…

A complicit partner, he says, is a media “intent on preserving the status quo …and never offending the ruling elite”.

Washington Post’s Walter Pincus:

More and more the media become, I think, common carriers of administration statements and critics of the administration….We’ve sort of given up being independent on our own.

June 22, 2014

Why US hard power failed in Iraq and elsewhere | Bill Moyers

Outstanding. Military historian Andrew Bacevich sums up the stupidity of US foreign policy and how repeated failures could be rectified. He exposes the “duplicity of ideologues” on calls for intervention in Iraq and discusses the moral responsibility to the people of Iraq. What can be done to alleviate the suffering of the people in Iraq? “There is remarkably little discussion as to cost if you want to bomb someone, but we suddenly become acutely cost-conscious if there is a proposal to assist them.”

Dick Cheney [at 06:00] in 1993, answering a question on the first Gulf war, predicted what would happen if Iraq was invaded: “…Once you take down Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq, then what are you going to put in its place? If you take down the central government in Iraq, you could easily see pieces of Iraq fly off…..it’s a quagmire.”

Projection of hard power by the US has not solved global problems over the last 50 years. In fact it has exacerbated problems in the Middle East. Soft power is far more effective. But it needs a change of mind-set on the part of the US. Don’t get me wrong. You still need Teddy Roosevelt’s “big stick” as a deterrent, but soft power — engineers, doctors and school teachers — are far more effective at winning people over to your world-view than B52s and unmanned drones.

April 8, 2013

Afghanistan: What Went Wrong? | Colonel Gian Gentile

“History…. suggests that whatever we decide to do, let’s decide to do it on the premise of: there are limits to what our power can accomplish in the world — especially military power — and sometimes there may be other alternatives to using military power to shape a world that we want to see……”

To paraphrase Abraham Maslow: If your favorite tool is a hammer, every problem starts to resemble a nail.

The views expressed by Colonel Gentile here do not necessarily represent those of the United States government or the Department of Defense.

This interview was recorded shortly after the event, “The War in Afghanistan: What Went Wrong?” at the Cato Institute April 5, 2013.
http://www.cato.org/events/war-afghan.

October 21, 2011

Obama Announces Complete Drawdown of U.S. Troops From Iraq by Year’s End – ABC News

“Today, I can report that as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year,” the president [Obama] said. “After nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.”

via Obama Announces Complete Drawdown of U.S. Troops From Iraq by Year’s End – ABC News.

Doesn’t it just inspire you with confidence in the political system when battlefield decisions are made to coincide with the presidential election campaign — and enemies are notified of troop withdrawals two months in advance — so they can plan a “going away” party for your troops.