The Twisted Stupidity of American Foreign and Military Policy — Is Seen in Iraq and Yemen

© 2015 Peter Free

 

27 March 2015

 

 

Bitter laughter

 

Recent events pretty well sum up American leadership’s characteristic lack of foresight:

 

 

Iranian forces and Shia militia groups have pulled back from front line around Tikrit, as US airstrikes were launched to help Iraqi forces battling Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a top US general has said.

 

General Lloyd Austin, the head of US Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the US agreed to come in with air strikes in Tikrit under the condition that the militias pull back.

 

The US General told the committee that he had insisted that Iranian-backed militias pull back before the US began flying intelligence-gathering flights over the weekend and dropping bombs on Wednesday.

 

"I will not, and I hope we never, coordinate or cooperate with Shia militias," he told the Committee.

 

Austin said that the Iraqi government accepted as a condition of US airstrikes that Shia militias will not be part of the effort to stabilise the city once it is recaptured, the AP news agency reported.

 

However, spokespersons for a number of the militias rejected Austin's claim, saying they chose to withdraw from the battle for Tirkit in protest of the US entering the fray.

 

© 2015 Al Jazeera, Shia militias pull back as US joins battle for Tikrit, Al Jazeera English (27 March 2015)

 

 

Think this joke through

 

The US (led by the reckless George W. Bush) invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled its Sunni government. This eventually allowed Iranian-influenced Shias to take over there.

 

Those Shia guys “pissed off” Iraq’s Sunni population, as well as a significant portion of the Sunni-dominated former Iraqi military. The angry Sunnis then “whupped-ass” the new Shia-led Iraqi Army, took its American-provided weapons, and went off to fight infidels with ISIL.

 

The US, panicking the way always does, started an air war with ISIL. It simultaneously tried to get its supposed regional allies to “man” up and contribute the ground troops that America is itself was too afraid to involve. However, absent effective ground troops, things did not go especially well for us.

 

Not surprisingly, Sunni ISIL’s increasing regional power evidently began threaten Shia Iran, as well as provide an excuse for the expansion of Iranian influence. Iran sent General Qasem Soleimani to command Shia militias in Iraq. These militias are currently helping the Iraq Army to confront (Sunni) ISIL in city called Tikrit. The militias have been doing reasonably well, and ISIL looked as if it might ultimately be pushed out.

 

The United States, however — apparently feeling unmanly in “de-balled” sort of way — decided that it needed to imprint its macho American stamp on the anticipated coming success by sending American airpower over Tikrit.

 

We apparently cannot stomach an Iranian general and his Shia militias looking good in a war with terrorists that the United States itself created. America — the world’s simultaneous (indirect) promoter of aggressive Zionist expansionism and Arabian hatred — likes to paint (Persian) Iran as the Middle East’s most prominent devil.

 

As a result of this geopolitically bogus reasoning, we now get the ridiculousness of American air power going into battle, but apparently without a planned assault from the Iranian-influenced ground forces that made the anticipated victory possible in the first place.

 

Which pretty much means that we are right back where we started — without credible means on the ground to kick ISIL’s teeth in.

 

 

Meanwhile in Yemen — adding to the outward rippling joke

 

Over the last few years, American machinations — predominantly via its drone murder program — completely destabilized the already fragile situation in Yemen. Shia Houthi (Ansar Allah) rebels booted the American-supported Yemeni government out of power, and Yemen fell into near chaos.

 

As a result of this block tumbling, Sunni Saudi Arabia began bombing Shia Houthis in Yemen because the Saudis think that Shias are getting too close to Saudi Arabian borders.

 

CNN today reported that the United States is helping the Saudis, thereby irritating Iran even more:

 

 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday did tell foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman that the United States commends the military action and is supporting it through intelligence sharing, targeting assistance and logistical support, according to a senior State Department official.

 

© 2015 Greg Botelho and Saeed Ahmed, Saudi-led coalition strikes rebels in Yemen, inflaming tensions in region, CNN (27 March 2015)

 

 

If we think that this is a recipe for peace with a voluntarily non-nuclear Iran, we are deluded

 

To top our trouble-making stupidity off, we are again explicitly supporting a Saudi regime that has been actively funding Sunni terror around the world — some of which kills our own troops.

 

 

If all this makes strategic sense to you, you must be a member of the American Idiot Clan

 

American foreign and military policy throws gasoline on small fires and turns them into regional conflagrations.

 

 

The moral? — George W. Bush started a cataclysm of genuinely historic proportions

 

The Obama Administration’s policies afterward escalated an already grim situation.

 

Of course, none of American leadership’s dopes will pay for their strategic blunders. It is the little people overseas and our own troops whose lives end.