|
Iraq: The U.S. Has No Role In This
The ISIS/former Baathist/Sunni alliance in Iraq is consolidating its position in north-west Iraq. It has captured border post towards Syria and now also towards Jordan. The last item will let red lights flash in Washington and elsewhere.
The ridiculous position of the United States, supporting, arming and training Jihadi insurgents in Syria while seeing them as a danger in Iraq and elsewhere, is coming more to the front. What are we to think of such lunatic headline? Kerry Arrives in Cairo on Trip to Help Form New Iraqi Government
Nobody wants Kerry's "help". The threat thereof unites even strong antagonists. Iran as well as the Saudis are against any U.S. intervention or "help" in Iraq. The Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki would probably like some U.S. support for his disintegrating army but will rather go it alone if such support is connected with demands for him to leave his position.
And is Kerry really asking Sisi, the new brutal dictator of Egypt, for support? What could that jailer of a bancrupt nation do? He will neither be for Maliki nor will he support the Jihadists. There is no alternative to those two in sight. Sisi will simply take the bribes Kerry brings in support of Israel and leave it at that.
There is nothing Kerry can do for Iraqis. Unites States policies in the Middle East have run their course. Their impotence was shown through two lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its incompetence demonstrated in the contradictoriness of "promoting democracy" on one side while supporting radical religious dictatorships in the Gulf. A step out of that would be an U.S. alliance with Iran but such a radical policy change would likely be ripped apart within Washington's polical circus.
It is not only in the Middle East where U.S. polices lead to disillusions of allies and to shaking of the head by foes. Consider what even the neoconned Polish Foreign Minister thinks of U.S. "friendship":
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, generally viewed as a leading ally of the United States in Europe, said in a mysteriously-leaked recording Sunday that the alliance between the two countries is “not worth anything.”
“The Polish-American alliance is not worth anything. It’s even damaging, because it creates a false sense of security in Poland,” Sikorski says on an excerpt of a longer conversation set to be published Monday morning in the magazine Wprost, which is reportedly between Sikorski and former finance minister Jacek Rostowski.
…
“We are gonna conflict with both Russians and Germans, and we’re going to think that everything is great, because we gave the Americans a blowjob. Suckers. Total suckers,” Sikorski says, according to a translation of the account for BuzzFeed.
The U.S. should stay out of Iraq. Local forces there will battle it out and the sponsors of each side will find their common interest and some agreement. They already agree on one major point. The U.S. has no role in this.
from wsws:
Democracy and the debacle in Iraq
23 June 2014
Over the past two weeks, the Obama administration and the foreign policy
establishment in the United States have moved rapidly to exploit the
crisis in Iraq to intensify military operations throughout the Middle East.
Hundreds of US military “advisors” are on their way back to Iraq even as
the American ruling class plans air strikes against Syria and maneuvers
aimed at undermining Iran.
The propaganda that emanates from the political establishment, uncritically
reflected in the media, is sickening in its cynicism and hypocrisy. While
divided over tactics in the pursuit of global power, the different factions
of the state and military apparatus are united on at least one issue: they
bear no responsibility for anything.
Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry, dispatched to the Middle East to plot
with US allies and threaten adversaries, summed up the general sentiment when
he declared at a press conference in Cairo (where he met with US-backed Egyptian
dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi): “The United States of America is not responsible
for what happened in Libya, nor is it responsible for what is happening in Iraq today.”
According to Kerry’s interpretation of history, the American military “shed blood
and worked hard for years for the Iraqis to have their own governance.” While the
United States selflessly promoted democracy, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
“crossed the line from Syria.”
ISIS, Kerry continued, “have attacked communities and they are the ones marching
through to disrupt the ability of Iraq to have the governance it wants.”
As always, American government officials speak as if no one knows anything and they
can peddle blatant lies without consequence. But Kerry’s narrative is contradicted
by facts that have found their way into even the media’s coverage of events.
First, while the US may have been caught off guard by the rapidity with which the
Iraqi state has disintegrated over the past several weeks, it is by no means
unfamiliar with ISIS. The Islamic fundamentalist group has received funding from
the US and its autocratic Gulf allies as part of the imperialist-backed insurgency
against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Once again, the United States is
reaping what it has sowed.
Moreover, ISIS’s advance in Iraq is certainly seen by sections of the American
(and Israeli) ruling class as a positive development to the extent that it undermines
the influence Iran exerts over the government of Iraq and its current president,
Nouri al-Maliki.
Despite Kerry’s protestations, it is understood throughout the world that the United
States is principally responsible for the catastrophe that threatens to plunge the
entire region into generalized civil war.
The complete absence of any accountability for the crimes of American imperialism has
been on graphic display over the past week in the political reemergence of former Vice
President Dick Cheney, the criminal mastermind behind the Bush administration’s foreign policy.
Cheney appeared Sunday on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” to agitate for
the reinvasion of Iraq. Criticizing the Obama administration for not moving quickly
enough, Cheney declared, “When we’re arguing over 300 advisers when the request had
been for 20,000 in order to do the job right, I’m not sure we’ve really addressed the problem.”
Cheney added that a “broad strategy” was needed, including “helping the resistance
up in Syria, in [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s] back yard, with training
and weapons and so forth,” and intensifying the military campaign in Pakistan and
Afghanistan. Seeking to deflect suggestions that he had anything to do with the
present crisis, Cheney said, “If we spend our time debating what happened 11 or 12
years ago, we’re going to miss the threat that is growing.”
Nothing testifies so clearly to the dysfunctional state of American democracy
than the fact that Cheney is still paraded before the public as a distinguished
authority on foreign policy. He exemplifies the absence of any real legal or
political accountability for the crimes committed by the ruling oligarchy. Even
in the midst of a major foreign policy disaster, there has been no call for even
the formality of congressional hearings into the history of the US intervention
in Iraq and the so-called “war on terror.”
It should be recalled that in the midst of the Vietnam War, the US Senate Foreign
Relations Committee held a series of hearings between 1966 and 1971, referred to
collectively as the Fulbright hearings. These hearings took testimony from a wide
range of expert witnesses, including prominent opponents of the war. Kerry himself
took part, as a veteran advocating an end to the war. At that point in American
history, there still existed a certain conception that the public had some right
to know how foreign policy was made.
Nothing of that remains today. Foreign policy is carried out exclusively behind
the backs of the people. It is decided by a criminal cabal that operates with
full knowledge that there will be — at least from within the political establishment — no
consequences for its actions. These are the features of a political system thoroughly
corrupted by unrestrained militarism and extreme social inequality.
There is an urgent need for the creation of a new mass movement against imperialism and
war. Such a movement can develop only on the basis of the political mobilization of the
working class. The struggle against the new catastrophes that the ruling class is
planning must develop outside of and in opposition to the Obama administration, the
Democratic and Republican parties, and the political agencies and institutions of the
capitalist state.
A renewed antiwar movement can succeed only to the extent that it is rooted in the
independent interests of the international working class, armed with a socialist
program, with the aim at wrenching power out of the hands of the financial oligarchy
and its cast of political conspirators.
Posted by: okie farmer | Jun 23 2014 6:33 utc | 93
|
