Invading Iraq was the Original Sin

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/242611/invading-iraq-was-the-original-sin/

First, the West jumped into Iraq too quickly then it likewise withdrew far too early. Now it's up to Europe to begin paying more attention to the Middle East, if only for its own security

Invading Iraq was the Original Sin
Süddeutsche Zeiting, Germany
By Joschka Fischer
Translated By Ron Argentati
9 July 2014
Edited by Katie Marinello

The old Middle East—the Middle East that the European colonial powers Great Britain and France cobbled together from what they inherited of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the First World War and that still exists in that form today—is sinking. The new Middle East that is replacing it is growing out of the ever-increasing chaos in this conflict-ridden region. We mainly have the United States to thank for that state of affairs.

The original sin that brought it all about was President George W. Bush's military invasion of Iraq in 2003. The neocons that ruled Washington at the time had their heads full of ideology and wishful thinking. What they forgot was reality and, along with it, the answer to the question of how the power vacuum caused by Saddam Hussein's downfall would be filled—in Iraq and also throughout the whole Middle Eastern region. When the same bumbling characters led by Tony Blair and Dick Cheney now criticize Barack Obama for the situation today, one can only laugh; they are the very people decidedly responsible for the disaster we have today.

Withdrawal Came Too Soon

The second mistake was made by Barack Obama when he ordered a military withdrawal too early, thus relinquishing the power to control the region. Obama remained passive even after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and is now threatened with the possibility of the advancing terrorists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant capturing Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, and Iraq's possible disintegration. The border between Iraq and Syria no longer de facto exists. Should that situation persist, not only Iraq's borders are questionable but those of many neighboring states as well. New regional borders would likely be drawn by force and the human catastrophe would assume greater dimensions.

If ISIL is actually successful in establishing a permanent state-like entity in parts of Iraq and Syria, the disintegration of the entire region would be greatly accelerated. The United States will then have lost the “war on terror” and world peace would be seriously threatened. But even if the Iraqi military and its allies prevent ISIL from achieving that goal, the situation would remain extremely unstable and the Syrian civil war would still be a highly volatile source of infection, since what is happening in Syria is no longer a civil war. It is the stage for the battle being waged between Saudi Arabia and Iran for regional hegemony. The struggle is fed by the ancient conflict between the majority Sunnis and minority Shiites.


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I'll disagree on point #2 about Obama withdrawing too early.

1. Bush negotiated the withdrawal:

In May, 2007 Iraq's Parliament called on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal[64] and U.S. coalition partners such as the U.K. and Denmark began withdrawing their forces from the country.[65][66] In 2008 fighting continued Iraq's newly trained armed forces launched attacks against militants and the Iraqi government signed the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement which required U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities by 30 June 2009, and withdraw completely out of Iraq by 31 December 2011.

2. al-Maliki did not sign the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement and Obama was forced into withdrawing all US troops.

The 4,486+ dead American soldiers and over four trillion dollars (on the National Credit Card) to invade and occupy Iraq for 8 years as well as Afghanistan for 13 years is a fact.

Repeated deployments over the years has really fucked up US Forces. Suicides and soldier homelessness are at all time highs. VA claims are soaring. VA shenanigans are coming to light. Congress is bitching about spending money on Veterans' health rather than more weapons systems.

IMO both invasions were wars of choice and should have been avoided.

[jakeXT]

1. 1968 coup ? And btw Nabucco Joschka was always a suspect guy

PHILADELPHIA�If the United States succeeds in shepherding the creation of a post-war Iraqi government, a former National Security Council official says, it won't be the first time that Washington has played a primary role in changing that country's rulers.

Roger Morris, a former State Department foreign service officer who was on the NSC staff during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, says the CIA had a hand in two coups in Iraq during the darkest days of the Cold War, including a 1968 putsch that set Saddam Hussein firmly on the path to power.

Morris says that in 1963, two years after the ill-fated U.S. attempt at overthrow in Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs, the CIA helped organize a bloody coup in Iraq that deposed the Soviet-leaning government of Gen. Abdel-Karim Kassem.

"This takes you down a longer, darker road in terms of American culpability ....

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0420-05.htm

BERLIN — Joschka Fischer, the former student radical, Green Party leader, German foreign minister and Princeton professor, is aware of the irony in his latest career move: strategic consultant for a transnational pipeline.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/business/global/23fischer.html

During the course of the 1990s, Fischer was instrumental to swaying his pacifist party to
support Germany's participation in the NATO-led war against Slobodan Milosevic's
Yugoslavia. It is an irony of history that Germany's first-ever Green foreign minister took the
nation to war for the first time since World War II, a move that had enormous implications for
both the Greens party, the Federal Republic, and the Balkan

http://www.esiweb.org/pdf/esi_picture_story_-_joschka_fischer_the_german_greens_and_the_balkans_-_january_2008.pdf