Forget the Ebola scares: if you want depressing news, pay attention to what’s going on in Iraq, the country that the United States “liberated” and occupied from 2003 to 2011.
BAGHDAD — On the western edge of Iraq's capital, Islamic State group militants battle government forces and exchange mortar fire, only adding to the sense of siege in Baghdad despite airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition.
Yet military experts say the Sunni militants of the Islamic State group, who now control a large territory along the border that Iraq and Syria share, won't be able to fight through both government forces and Shiite militias now massed around the capital.
It does, however, put them in a position to wreak havoc in Iraq's biggest city, with its suicide attacks and other assaults further eroding confidence in Iraq's nascent federal government and its troops, whose soldiers already fled the Islamic State group's initial lightning advance in June.
"It's not plausible at this point to envision ISIL taking control of Baghdad, but they can make Baghdad so miserable that it would threaten the legitimacy of the central government," said Richard Brennan, an Iraq expert with RAND Corporation and former Department of Defense policymaker, using an acronym for the Islamic State group. 1
America spent close to a decade and easily over a trillion dollars in Iraq, first deposing the regime of Saddam Hussein and disbanding his military, then installing a provisional government and overseeing free elections while building and training a brand-new Iraqi army. Three years after we left the country to its own devises, Iraq is aflame once again with violence.
The siege fears in Baghdad stem from recent gains made by the Islamic State group in the so-called Baghdad Belt — the final stretch between Anbar province, where the group gained ground in Janaury, and Baghdad. The group has had a presence in the Baghdad Belt since spring, Iraqi officials say, but recent advances have sparked new worries.
Last week, Islamic State group fighters seized the towns of Hit and neighboring Kubaisa, sending Iraqi soldiers fleeing and leaving a nearby military base with its stockpile of weapons at risk of capture. The U.S.-led coalition recently launched two airstrikes northwest of Hit, U.S. Central Command said Saturday.
Perhaps most worrying, Islamic State group fighters now battle Iraqi forces in Abu Ghraib, the town home to the infamous prison of the same name that's only 18 miles (29 kilometers) from the Green Zone, the fortified international zone protecting Baghdad-based embassies and government office.
A senior military official in Anbar told The Associated Press on Saturday that government helicopters fire on targets daily in Abu Ghraib, though the town remains in the hands of security forces.
To the south of Baghdad, security forces fight to hold onto the town of Jurf al-Sukr, and to the north, one Sunni tribe has held onto the town of Duluiyah despite an Islamic State group's onslaught. However, Islamic State group fighters have taken over a number of towns in Diyala province, east of Baghdad.
Yet authorities believe an assault to take Baghdad remains unlikely. An Iraqi military and intelligence official each told the AP that as many as 60,000 government security personnel, including soldiers and police officers, are currently in position outside the city along the Baghdad Belt. A plot by the Islamic State group to enter Baghdad in September through the Shiite al-Kazimiyah neighborhood was foiled, the officials added.
Both Iraqi officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to journalists.
Ah, the “Baghdad Belt”: Baghdad itself, Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, and Anbar Province (“Home of the Surge!”). Such names are familiar to us in America—they are places where Americans fought and died on behalf of the neo-conservative dreams of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and George W. Bush. Those dreams became a nightmare for the citizens of Iraq, as well as for the American military, and the nightmare led (as it was intended to do) to a destabilizing of the region, with predictably unpredictable results: some gains for representative government here, some rebellions against oppressive dictators there, and a whole lot of room for sectarian radicals to operate. The seeds of ISIS/ISIL were sown by Al Qaeda in Iraq, a group which did not exist until U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein.
Speaking of which:
Since that initial September assault, Baghdad largely has been spared and remained relatively calm, considering the intense sectarian bloodshed residents saw in 2006 and 2007 after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. Still, many remain worried.
"It's scary," said Maha Ismail, who recently visited one of Baghdad's new shopping malls. "But we have seen a lot worse than this so we are gathering despite all the warnings."
A U.S. counterterrorism official who spoke to the AP said Baghdad would remain a target for Islamic State group attacks, though seizing it outright would be nearly impossible.
"Attacking Baghdad is probably still in (its) playbook but its leaders must know they would face overwhelming odds in striking the city," the U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to journalists.
Islamic State group says it has a foothold inside Baghdad, having claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in the city, particularly in the Sadr City neighborhood — a Shiite stronghold. In August, the group claimed responsibility for an attack on a Shiite mosque in New Baghdad, and another in the Shiite-majority district of Utaifiya in Baghdad, which together killed 26 people.
Some attacks go unclaimed, raising fears that other groups may look to capitalize on the tensions provoked by the Islamic State group. On Saturday, a series of unclaimed car bomb attacks in Iraq's capital killed 30 people in Shiite areas, authorities said.
Conservatives and Republicans insist that Barack Obama has “lost” Iraq by withdrawing our troops according to the timeline set down by the Bush administration and agreed to by the Iraqi government: as if leaving thousands of American troops in that country (unwanted by the host government and the populace) would have prevented ISIS/ISIL from forming or from expanding its reach, and as if American troops would not simply have provided a prime target and rallying cry for jihadists.
Leading the “blame Obama first” charge is Senator John McCain, whose vaunted military expertise is based entirely on having been held in captivity in North Vietnam.2 McCain claims that “the Surge worked” and that America “won” its war in Iraq; those claims have always been nonsense. What the Surge did in 2007-08 was calm things down in Iraq just long enough for the U.S. to get out with a modicum of dignity, having bitten off far more than we could chew and having revived the word “quagmire” from its Vietnam-era usage.
All is not lost:
Analysts, like Brennan from the RAND Corporation, say capturing Baghdad remains beyond the Islamic State group's ability. At its worst, the group might "start pressing into the western areas of Baghdad, going into the Sunni areas of Baghdad and pressing up against the Tigris (River) — if not controlling it, then at least testing the control of the central government," he said.
Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said Saturday that the Iraqi military "continues to maintain firm control of the city and there is no imminent threat of an effective" offensive by the Islamic State group.
"While there are pockets of ISIL in the vicinity of Baghdad, (Iraqi security forces) continue to conduct operations to engage these elements and push back with the support of U.S. airstrikes when necessary," Ryder said, using the alternative acronym for the Islamic State group.
Beyond the U.S.-coordinated airstrikes and the massing of Iraqi troops, the country's religious and ethnic lines likely will staunch any advance by the Sunni militants of the Islamic State group. From Baghdad further south, Iraq's population is overwhelmingly Shiite and the lands there are home to some of its most important shrines.
Already, Shiite militias back up government forces in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq — their flags and symbols provocatively displayed across the capital. Such militias, like Iran-supported Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, "are battle tested," said David L. Phillips, the director of the Peace-building and Rights Program at Columbia University. Challenging them likely would become a bloody slog for the Islamic State group, he said.
"The militias are not bound by rules of war," he added. "They and (the Islamic State group) share one thing in common: Neither is bound by the Geneva Conventions." 3
Somewhere on a ranch in Texas, a once-powerful man, scion of a powerful family, busies himself with his latest hobby, painting oil-on-board portraits of World Leaders He Once Knew. And while he dabbles and daubs, the Middle East is broken and bleeding and America is being drawn back into the wreckage it made, with absolutely no chance of doing anything other than making it worse.
On second thought, let’s talk about something less depressing—like Ebola.
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1 http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/worried-iraqi-capital-sees-militant-push-around-it/ar-BB8KhhF
2 My remark about Senator McCain is horribly cruel and insensitive, but I stand by it. It’s high time that the American media stop treating this man like the second coming of Napoleon or the reincarnation of Clausewitz; John McCain has no proven military expertise whatsoever. Our sympathy for his suffering or our admiration for his courage in captivity should not lead us to trust his judgment.
3 The Geneva Conventions? Since when do Americans care about the Geneva Conventions when it comes to fighting the War on Terror? We abandoned those quaint gallantries almost immediately after 9/11, and John Yoo has the legal briefs to prove it.
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