Candid Discussions:
 Ali Khedery on Iraq and Syria
I was reading a very bad article by Jon Wilson* on Labour List, when I thought Ali Khedery puts many of the points much better, even if I don't view things from the official American perspective.
"It’s said that in fact Assad is one of ISIS’s biggest financiers because he is one of ISIS’s customers for the crude oil that it sells after taking over many of Syria’s oil fields and now some of Iraq’s. So it’s very counterintuitive. And let’s not forget that it was Assad’s military intelligence services throughout the American occupation of Iraq that actively recruited, financed, trained, and armed al-Qaeda. They trained them in Syria, they recruited them from across the Arab world and sent them to Iraq for suicide bombing missions at a rate of 50 to 100 a month. We know this for an absolute fact.
The whole point of this campaign by Assad, Hezbollah, and the Iran axis was to bleed, exhaust, and defeat America; similar to how the U.S., the Saudis, and others sought to support the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to defeat the Soviet Union, ultimately leading to the Soviet Union’s collapse and its humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan. So they wanted to replicate the same model with the United States in Iraq. And frankly, they succeeded. Thousands of Americans were killed and wounded by al-Qaeda and thousands more were killed and wounded by the Iranian-backed Shia militias. So the United States and the Iraqi Security Forces were squeezed by Assad-trained al-Qaeda elements in the west and Iranian-backed Shia militias in the east. Although no one will admit this in Washington, we did withdraw from Iraq in humiliation to the extent that the Iranians dictated that outcome to Maliki, and then Iran was able to fill that vacuum."
To four paragraphs by Jon Wilson. First:
"Iraq’s present political crisis now is a consequence of the 2003 occupation. War created chaos, and there was no effort to build a stable society afterwards. As LSE Professor Toby Dodge’s new book shows, the west was more interested in guaranteeing its own security rather than building democracy or peace. Nouri al-Maliki’s security state became increasingly absent from ordinary peoples’ lives. Understandably, they turned to whatever groups of armed men look best placed to defend their interests. The rise of Islamic State and sectarianism were the consequence."
Too simplistic. It isn't the occupation that has created the crisis, but the choice after Iraq had been messed up to leave it in the hands of Maliki and his Iranian backers, whose anti-Sunni policies have fed ISIS. That doesn't mean that war with Iran is the answer, but neither is excusing it for the mass murder it has conducted in Syria, and thinking a joint effort would be the best way to go the bring Middle East unity.
"We can, of course, offer small acts of assistance by feeding starving people on mountains. But we – particularly on the left – need to stop using the Middle East as a vehicle for our urge to be righteous or tough, to prove to ourselves we’re good and strong."
Speak for yourself mate. I'd much rather be right than righteous. This is a myth built up by those wanting to blame American warmongering for Assad's genocide in Syria, that the only alternative to their passivity is demanding macho bombing action from the heirs of Tony Blair.
"Instead, we need to back organisations which get people together to help them run their own lives – trade unions, anti-corruption campaigns, cross-sectarian parties – just as we would do here."
How do you do that in Syria when Assad kills all such people? Why when all such people have been under threat, have their defenders been cast as Western proxies or Saudi stooges? Why are any foreign efforts to support such NGOs in Syria cast as part of an American régime change plot?
I saw someone suggest in a Guardian thread we should concentrate on providing humanitarian aid, like water supplies. Everyone is easier to deal with if they've got enough water. And how do you stop Assad or ISIS coming and stealing it all and killing the intended recipients? By providing the FSA with weapons, probably not so well by US bombing, certainly not by saying the important thing is to worry about UK/US bombing.
"But above all, we must recognise we have little power to make a difference in the long term. We need to stop imagining that Iraq will go to hell unless we help, and be far more optimistic about the capacity of Iraqis to defeat Islamic State, and rebuild their own society."
Here there is a dishonest vagary of terminology. 'Help' here means bombing, rather than providing arms, but it left to cover that too. 'Be far more optimistic about the capacity of Iraqis' wouldn't seem to exclude sending arms to Iraq. So Jon Wilson is have his cake and eating it, any intervention that goes wrong proves his point, but if they get massacred it isn't his fault.
*[http://labourlist.org/…/why-we-keep-messing-up-in-the-midd…/]