The U.S. Army’s outgoing chief of staff warned Wednesday that reconciliation between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq is becoming harder and that partitioning the country ‘might be the only solution…’
General Raymond Odierno, who once served as the top U.S. commander in Iraq and retires Friday after nearly 40 years in uniform, said the U.S. focus for now should be on defeating the Islamic State, the jihadist group that has seized large portions of the country.
But in a valedictory news conference he took a pessimistic view about the underlying conflict between Shiites and Sunnis that brought the two communities to brink of civil war in 2006.
(Agence France-Presse, August 13, 2015)
Frankly, the U.S. military conceding this point comes too many years, too many billions, and above all, too many deaths too late. After all, some of us saw partition as “the only solution” years ago:
I fear the only hope now is to partition the country into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni zones and leave them to defend their own borders and barter (or fight) for a share Iraq’s oil wealth.
So, here’s to the triumph of opportunistic politics over failed military strategies.
(“At Last, Rumsfeld Becomes a Casualty of the Iraq War,” The iPINIONS Journal, November 9, 2006)
Unfortunately, Gen. Odierno is talking out of both sides of his mouth. For, even as he concedes that the only solution to sectarian strife in Iraq is a political one, he suggests that it might be necessary to embed about 1,000 U.S. troops with Iraqi soldiers to help them defeat ISIS terrorists.
Mind you, this is the same general who commanded a rotation of 1.5 million U.S. troops on a mission to help Iraqis defeat al-Qaeda terrorists/Sunni insurgents.
Yet, according to “Iraq by the Numbers,” Democratic Policy and Communications Center, December 11, 2011, here is what they have to show for their ten-year effort:
- 4,474 dead comrades
- 32,226 maimed comrades
- 115,676 dead Iraqi civilians
- $850 billion wasted
Not to mention that the dispiriting fact that Iran and ISIS wield more influence in Iraq today than the United States. Is it any wonder that – as the Washington Post reported on March 29, 2014 – 56 percent of vets believe the Iraq war was not worth fighting?
But I am stupefied that President Obama is even considering Odierno’s retread-embed strategy. After all, Obama not only had the good sense to oppose the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which stirred up the hornet’s nest of sectarian strife that has bedeviled that country ever since; but he premised his presidency on getting U.S. troops out of that infernal mess … presumably for good.
Moreover, in “Obama’s Afghan Surge Fails,” September 28, 2012, I lamented how his surge of U.S. troops failed to improve conditions in the “good war” – as Obama himself called the war in Afghanistan. Therefore, it seems foolhardy for anyone, especially Obama, to think that a surge of U.S. troops (albeit disguised as incremental deployments of advisers) will improve conditions in the “bad war” in Iraq.
With his mission creep of military “advisers,” Obama failed to heed the hard lesson JFK learned. Now he’s failing to heed the hard lesson George H.W. Bush learned. For his campaign promise to “bring our troops home” was every bit as inviolable as the elder Bush’s infamous “read my lips, no new taxes.” Given that human lives instead of tax dollars are involved, breaking his promise should entail far graver consequences for Obama’s presidency than those Bush’s suffered after breaking his.
Meanwhile, if the suicide bombs that rocked Baghdad again just yesterday did not punctuate the sacrificial nature of deploying troops back to Iraq, late-breaking reports on the fateful irony of ISIS launching chemical weapons should.
In any event, here’s to American political and military leaders being finally disabused of their perverse form of noblesse oblige, which has them trying in vain to stop one set of Muslims from killing another. This is not genocide. It’s an internecine struggle, dating back one thousand years, which by definition is none of America’s business.
Specifically, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS are waging blood feuds for the soul of Islam. And, despite our meddlesome warmongering and their anti-Western blustering, each of them is far more interested in subjugating or killing so-called moderate Muslims to win this clash within Islam than they are in beheading Westerners in a clash of civilizations.
Accordingly, I repeat what I began pleading almost 10 years ago: Americans should leave Afghans, Iraqis, and Syrians to fight their own sectarian battles. And, if ISIS or al-Qaeda jihadists are the ones standing when the dust is settled, Americans should be prepared to deploy:
One Drone to find them all, One Drone to watch them,
One Drone to bomb them all, and from the skies contain them,
In the Land of Babylon where the Dark Ages loom.
(“Time to Partition Iraq? Ha!” The iPINIONS Journal, March 31, 2015)
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