{"id":5786,"date":"2015-11-27T08:41:38","date_gmt":"2015-11-27T13:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5786"},"modified":"2015-11-24T22:00:43","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T03:00:43","slug":"iraq-told-ya-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5786","title":{"rendered":"Iraq: Told Ya So . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in December of 2006, I posted a blog here entitled “IRAQ: WHAT TO DO<\/a>“. Basically, I said that the Bush Administration should give up on the idea of a unified Iraq and split the nation into a Shia nation in the west and a Kurdish nation in the north-east, with a rump state in the west (Anbar Province) as a semi-independent Sunni nation. I say semi-independent, because I envisioned this state to be in a loose confederation with the new Kurdistan. In effect, I proposed that the Kurds would share some of their oil revenues with the Sunni state and generally “keep an eye on it” so as to prevent it from falling into terrorist hands (back then, al Qaeda . . . or more accurately, al Qaeda in Iraq<\/a> . . . which was destined to later become . . . well, more on that in a moment). <\/p>\n

But of course, a partition didn’t happen. The dream of a unified Iraq was held onto by Bush and then Obama. Iraqi President al-Maliki, under pressure from Iran, decided that US military presence was no longer needed or welcomed, and Obama was more than happy to oblige him. Starting in late 2007 and ending in 2011, the US gradually withdrew all of its previously extensive military presence in Iraq. Negotiations with Maliki on keeping a residual US force of around 10,000 troops for training and intelligence broke down when the pro-Iranian \/ anti-US Sadrists in Parliament blocked such an agreement<\/a>. Maliki politically favored the Shia factions over the Sunnis in a variety of ways, making the central government increasingly unpopular in the western provinces. <\/p>\n

And then, al Qadea in Iraq morphed into ISIS, the Islamic State. A dormant form of political cancer suddenly grew and metastasized, as cancers often do. Had Obama pushed back more vigorously about keeping some forces in Iraq in 2011, we probably would have seen it coming much earlier, and President Obama may have avoided the impression that the Islamic State was akin to “a jayvee team<\/a>“. But such a small contingency of American troops could not have prevented the rise of ISIS, especially in the face of the refusal of the Shia-dominated Iraqi military to fight it. The only potential solution would have been to have avoided the Sunni disenfranchisement and the Yemen-like political vacuum that was created; i.e., the Sunnis should have had their own independent state (or mostly independent, under Kurdish and American tutelage). This might have prevented ISIS from finding such fertile grounds for growth. <\/p>\n

Obviously, I wasn’t the only person who had the idea of partitioning Iraq. Then-Senator Joe Biden teamed up with foreign policy expert Leslie Gelb to publish an opinion piece<\/a> in 2006 calling for a federated 3-state arrangement in Iraq that would probably have led eventually to independent Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish nations. I’m not the only person who thinks<\/a>, in light of what actually happened, that now-VP Biden was right. And that I was right too!!<\/p>\n

But, it’s too late. ISIS is a cancer that has already metastasized, and stopping it will take a whole lot more blood and money than what might have been needed had the western provinces been allied with a strong Kurd nation with a vested interest in preventing the rise of a rogue theocratic state. Sure, ISIS probably would have still have formed in Syria, but it wouldn’t have had access to the Iraqi oil fields and infrastructure that have bankrolled its rapid growth. It would have been mostly just another faction battling Assad and the other groups in the Syrian donnybrook, at least in terms of overall strength.<\/p>\n

SO, I can now get in my “told ya so”. But unfortunately, it doesn’t matter, it won’t help. Winston Churchill was right in his warnings about the Nazi’s<\/a> in Germany back in 1933, but that didn’t prevent World War 2. I hope that we won’t need another long and terrible war to stop ISIS, but . . . well, we sure could use another Churchill right now (but I’ll be darned if I see anyone even close in today’s GOP and Democratic presidential races).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in December of 2006, I posted a blog here entitled “IRAQ: WHAT TO DO“. Basically, I said that the Bush Administration should give up on the idea of a unified Iraq and split the nation into a Shia nation in the west and a Kurdish nation in the north-east, with a rump state in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5786"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5786"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5798,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5786\/revisions\/5798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}