2014 in Iraq

If our not bombing or sending troops creates a "power vacuum", which Russia or China is bound to fill, then I am willing to bet a substantial amount of money that Russia and China would not fill that vacuum by bombing any part of Iraq or sending troops there, either. This suggests to me they must know how to exert power and influence in some other way than bombing or sending troops. Perhaps we could learn from them how its done.

tbf walt is making a much broader case for withdrawal than just not bombing or sending troops

If you truly believe a Mideast empire assembled under ISIS is a massive threat to our country or our allies and that ISIS has proved its ability to create and run an empire of such power, then you should be arguing for all-out war to extinguish that threat. I get heartily sick of the "splendid little wars" of imperial management of everyone's affairs through superior firepower. They stink to high heaven, imo, no matter what humanitarian justifications are offered up for them.

There is an all-out war currently being fought between ISIS, the Peshmerga and the Iraqi government. The US airstrikes are an attempt to support the Peshmerga ground troops by taking out heavy weaponry currently being used against them. The Iraqi government is also attempting this but doesn't appear to have been particularly successful. The current threat posed to the US's Kurdish and Iraqi allies isn't so much that ISIS is capable of building a mighty empire, it's that they're currently capable of slaughtering tens of thousands of civilians in short order and, if they fancied it, flooding half of Iraq via the Mosul dam.

Given that a fair number (estimated at 400, including the top strategic commander) are Chechens who have been bombed by Russia already, i'm not sure their plan B would be any different. It's important to recognise that unlike Iraq in 2003, Syria, Libya or any of the US' illegal drone sorties, this is a call for support from legitimate state actors allied to the US with defined objectives in aid of people who are getting their towns taken from them. Whether it's A Good Idea is still up for debate - it could potentially cause a few more Sunnis to rally behind ISIS, it doesn't provide a solution to the crisis of government and there is always the danger of less precise targeting if the bombing expanded, but it needs to be looked at on its merits.

I say, let ISIS try to rebuild the caliphate.

stoked for the genocidal madness

Iran will probably provide considerable resistance against IS...

Haven't some Iranians already come and gone? I'm sure I read somewhere that they were returning home "disillusioned"? Not that they couldn't/wouldn't come back of course. Can't find the article now though.

The US airstrikes are an attempt to support the Peshmerga ground troops by taking out heavy weaponry currently being used against them.

I can live with this. In general I have not been troubled by Obama's very narrow and cautious response to the current Iraq situation.

My arguments were not aimed solely, or even largely, at the extremely limited airstrikes authorized by Obama two days ago, but rather aimed at the many ilxors who were pushing the idea that the USA has a direct responsibility for stopping ISIS, based on such arguments I would paraphrase as 'we made Iraq what it is today and therefore are obliged to fix it' or 'ISIS slaughters civilians and does terrible things and therefore we have a moral obligation to stop them'. These arguments, if accepted, would effectively put all of Iraq under our protection and are so open-ended that they could be invoked to justify every possible act of war until Iraq is stable and peaceful.

Such arguments, in my view, are myopic and despite their insistent invocation of morality, justify unlimited violence. It was precisely such pretexts that led to the "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" inversions of logic in Vietnam.

I say, let ISIS try to rebuild the caliphate.

well, they control half of iraq already

i get your point, but i don't think they should be underestimated. a fundamentalist anti-shiite government in the most centrally located country in the middle east would be really bad, to say the least.

Iran and Iraq waged a million casualty war a couple years after the Iranian revolution. Yes, it was bad. The west survived.

Some would even say the west prospered. Weren't both sides using western weapons?

"i say, let the germans have their anschluss. if they start to show signs of being truly formidable on such a large scale, then we may reconsider our course. at this stage, they are not worth promoting to a national threat."

Oh stop it

You know how many wars are analogous to wwii? 0.

it's a bullshit analogy at least 95 percent of the time, but tbh it seems like a fair response when someone says it's fine with them if radical extremists take over the middle east and justifies it by pointing out that one time when a million ppl died there and it didn't affect us.

you know how many wars are analogous to Vietnam?

wake up sheeple, radical islamists are an affront to humanity

You know how many wars are analogous to wwii? 0.

― Οὖτις, Saturday, August 9, 2014 8:57 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

you know how many wars are analogous to Vietnam?

This one sure isn't.

The analogy I drew was entirely different. It had to do with prosecuting a war with the certainty that "we are doing the morally right thing" and how this "morally good" end will inevitably justify the violent means used to achieve it, no matter what those means might be. Those means can range from carpet bombing, to concentration camps, to dropping two nuclear bombs and killing 150,000 civilians. Or destroying a village in order to save it. This is how wars are started and how they are fought.

War should never be entered for the sole purpose of "doing good in the world". Because whatever good it may do is pretty questionable and uncertain, while the evil of it is 100% guaranteed. War is far bloodier and more heinous than mere murder. It is a holocaust visited on all who fall in its way. Casually assuming that we have a moral duty to go to war, and thinking that some high explosives will neatly cauterize whatever evil we see being done is a profound error in thinking about what war is. The public is constantly encouraged to make that error.

NB: I am not an absolute pacifist, but I don't leave a lot of wiggle room between me and them, because I think they have more justification for peace than the hawks do for war almost every damn time.

I agree w aimless

Vietnam was started after fabricating an assault on US ships, ie, an attack on national interests. It was also pretty clearly a war meant to fight for US interests, ie, opposing world communism. That example is pretty much an example against waiting until national interest is at risk. A fabricated threat to national interest was also what happened in Iraq in 2003. And of course, national interests was what lead to supporting Saddam Hussein against islamist Iran, a threat which owes a lot to the Iranian coup of 1953, supported by the west, as the socialist government was considered a threat to western interests.

Because whatever good it may do is pretty questionable and uncertain, while the evil of it is 100% guaranteed.

given the probability zero event that ISIS spontaneously stops cleansing the levant of infidels and heretics, the evil of inaction is also 100% guaranteed.

I agree. But the "evil of inaction" is a tricky thing compared to the more easily identified "evil of action, such as ISIS can lay claim to. For example, the Argentinians are not likely to act against the evils of ISIS, nor the Burmese, nor does Denmark seem to be answering the call to action. The amount of "evil of inaction" going on out there in the world is rather overwhelming. I bet you could even find some of it lurking in your own home if you squint hard.

I would hope that the Iraqis might find a bit of countervailing action to be in their interest, but they rarely seem to agree on what actions are to be taken. This seems to me to be a rather fundamental problem in this situation. I am reluctantly willing to lend them a bit of force for a short time, in case they can take good advantage of it, but that still presents the problem of the boy with his finger in the dyke. How do you remove it and the dyke not break?

Yes, 'evil of inaction' is tricky, and an overwhelming amount is going on. That's why we need to take it much more seriously, and soon.

pro-intervention ppl itt seem to imagine some sweet spot between the limited airstrikes now and a renewed attempt at nation building. what is the amount of participation on the table exactly??

i'm not a strategist but i think maybe a 10,000 soldier peacekeeping operation (NATO would be better than US alone) along the Tigris? ISIS def needs to be pushed back from Mosul (and the dam), so maybe supplement w/ air support?

LOL NATO RIP coalition of the willing

i buy the dam as a narrow and worthwhile target, but any placement of ground troops for an indefinite period of time worries me. surely the dam is always under threat as long as ISIS is in the region, but it doesn't sound like that kind of commitment would work to actively destabilize ISIS. this all feels so sisyphian that i'm not sure how anyone would evaluate what intervention is worthwhile and what's not. for that reason i'm skeptical of the 'blood on your hands!!' accusations being lobbied itt when no end in sight is being offered. surely before establishing that military action is worth the cost you need to establish that military action would be fundamentally effective

a 10,000 soldier peacekeeping operation

This only works once there is a negotiated peace to be kept. I do not envision such an agreement emerging in the near future, if at all.

i'm thinking along the lines of something like MONUSCO which had a mandate essentially to deal w/ M23 and help the government forces (which weren't up to the task of keeping them out of Goma). the UN is terrible tho, but I think a NATO or US operation would be more effective and could work alongside Kurdish fighters - of course this would probably mean giving legitimacy to kurdistan which hasn't happened yet from the US i guess (bc our terrible foreign policy requires that we pretend that maliki in baghdad is the legitimate representative of kurdistan i guess).

btw, MONUSCO sent about 16,000 troops. ISIS is probably better equipped and funded now than M23 tho i imagine.

Iran and Iraq waged a million casualty war a couple years after the Iranian revolution. Yes, it was bad. The west survived.

― dustups delivered to your door (Aimless), Saturday, 9 August 2014 18:49 (Yesterday) Permalink

Some would even say the west prospered. Weren't both sides using western weapons?

― Frederik B, Saturday, 9 August 2014 19:28 (Yesterday) Permalink

Some would even say the US backed one side of that war.

ISIS openly states in their propaganda that their goal is not only to control the entire middle east, but to retake Spain, to attack Rome, etc. They are well-trained fighters and better armed than most jihaddi groups due in part to their seizure of weapons that we gave the iraqi government. They are rapidly growing in power and wealth. They've seized oilfields and sell millions of dollars per day worth on the black market. Their propaganda is incredibly sophisticated and they use social media in an advanced way for worldwide recruiting and support. I can think of lots of reasons why they might ultimately fail without our intervention or might be unable to achieve their goals, but I don't think we can just be like "NBD if they become the new caliphate, whatever."

I don't think we can just be like "NBD if they become the new caliphate, whatever."

No one's saying that. A mere glance upthread shows I said, "If they start to show signs of being truly formidable on such a large scale, then we may reconsider our course."

They will ultimately collapse due to infighting and internal schisms, is my prediction. No way do they have the chops to become a stable ruling force.

looking forward to their invasion of italy tho, I bet that goes well.

Also looking forward to another decade of john mccain complaining about the U.S. military not killing enough people. Never enough w that guy.

obv italy is a pipe dream bc they have no excuse for ignoring jordan/israel, and it's over once they cross into mafraq

Yup

Vietnam was started after fabricating an assault on US ships, ie, an attack on national interests. It was also pretty clearly a war meant to fight for US interests, ie, opposing world communism.

Ike had CIA agents helping the French and American dollars paid for some that aid.

Some would even say the west prospered. Weren't both sides using western weapons?

― Frederik B, Saturday, 9 August 2014 19:28 (Yesterday) Permalink

Some would even say the US backed one side of that war.

― 'arry Goldman (Hurting 2),

We backed one side but sold missiles to "moderate" forces in the Iranian parliament in exchange for hostages. Also, I tend to believe the October Surprise stuff in fall '80.

To quote Joe Pesci, "Fun and games, man! Fun and games!"

lol at making sure to only give weapons to the moderate part of the parliament

it's ok, we're only working w/ the moderate democrats, the majority party run army won't have anything to do w/ these missiles

then of course Ollie North and Admiral Poindexter thought it would be "a neat idea" if we took the excess profits and funneled them to the Contras.

What could possibly go wrong

"While the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham’s (ISIS) conduct gets most of the headlines, what is happening in Iraq has to be understood at least in part as a Sunni popular uprising against Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, who has often been quite ruthless in his own right."

this was in jacobin a few months ago. i appreciate that aimless, unlike the author of that article, made a case for non-intervention without trying to argue that the threat ISIS poses to the region is negated, somehow, or even justified by the actions of the maliki government.

i guess "justified" is a mischaracterization of that argument... but i do think that a lot of people seem unwilling to face what, exactly, ISIS is.

The thing is, ISIS openly tells you exactly what they are if you can stomach watching their brutal propaganda videos. The questions in my mind are only how capable they are, and how far their backers are willing to support them to those ends, not what they intend to do. I can't think of any precedent in recent history for what they've accomplished so far in the region, but maybe I'm missing something.

the taliban seems like a good precedent, even though it's not exactly the same region.

I think they are more dangerous than the Taliban tbh.

The Taliban was extensively trained and financially backed by the Pakistani version of the CIA/KGB during their rise in Afghanistan. I haven't taken time to find out who is bankrolling ISIS, but I am sure it would be informative to know.

The Taliban were at least three times larger in 2001. High estimates for the strength of ISIS are approx 15,000. Low estimates are about 7,000. This contrasts with an Iraqi army of at least 280,000. The Peshmerga could probably get 200,000 together pretty easily.

The lack of willingness of Sunni Iraqis to fight them, with countless reports of soldiers just walking away from their posts when ISIS turn up, can't be separated from the al-Maliki government's unpopularity in those areas. There is plenty of speculation that the Sunni powers will turf them out when they have served their purpose, though, and take control themselves.

None of which is to say that assistance shouldn't be given to the Peshmerga but the political angle also needs to be addressed.

i am having a hard time understanding the scale of ISIS. how do they control so much territory if their numbers are so limited?