In comments today at the State Department, Rex Tillerson confirmed what has been reported for awhile, that the US intends to keep its thousands of ground troops in Iraq over the long-term, even after ISIS ends up being defeated.
Pentagon officials have been arguing for a more or less permanent deployment in Iraq since before the election, and Defense Secretary James Mattis, along with Gen. Joseph Dunford, were in Congress today again arguing for the idea of keeping troops in Iraq to prevent ISIS from ever coming back.
Tillerson presented this open-ended deployment as a “stabilization” operation, while arguing that dedicated significant military resources to post-war Iraq for the sake of stability would not amount to “nation-building,” something President Trump has warned against.
As Tillerson elaborated, however, it became increasingly clear that the plan, to restore Iraqi Sunni communities in the hope of “rejuvenating civil society” and to lead to stability and peace, along with removing any local support ISIS has, very much fits into the definition of nation-building.
Slogan for Today: “nation-building,”
We have seen the results of the USG’s hand at ‘nation-building’
in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen…
This doesn’t even include the USG’s disastrous ‘nation-building’
program in Central and South America.
USG ‘nation-building’ should begin at home with cleaning out
its corrupt warmongering establishment.
I thought the slogan was ‘stabilization’, but whatever.
They were never going to leave, Shia in charge or not, but ‘restoring Iraqi Sunni communities’ to ‘rejuvenate civil society’ sounds kind of dodgy, like reinventing the IS as something else.
‘stabilization’ is the corporate MSM’s translation for
‘nation-building’. A very good catch.
Actually, “stabilization” is code for “This nation ain’t stable and never will be. We’ll be fighting terrorism here forever, while using the CIA to guarantee it’s never stable.”
Given the considerable opposition to Trump banning Muslim travel from countries where the DS is deeply involved in Islamic terror, it may be that ‘fight them over there rather than fight them here’ is under review.
If so, its not clear that fighting ‘them’ over there and here will result in improved DS outcomes, but whatever. Chaos has its own fragmented logic.
So much for the concept of national sovereignty. Oh, and Republicans actually have the nerve to accuse the IRANIANS of colonizing Iraq, that’s rich.
No it’s not, because Iranians invaded Iraq a decade before the U.S. did.
In the mid-1970s, the Iranians invaded Iraq and stationed an infantry battalion in Kurdish territory there for about 18 months.
In the 1980-88 war, it was Iraq which invaded Iran, not vice versa.
That’s true about the technical onset of the Iran-Iraq War, but like you said Iran had been allied with the Kurds and Shia for many years, Saddam argued that he had to act, because war was coming as the Islamic revolution spread into Iraq from these fronts, a direct threat to secular government within Iraq.
If it happened in the 70’s the Shah was still in power. Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran in the real war, furnished by us.
How do you know so much?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/opinion/a-war-crime-or-an-act-of-war.html
What Saddam “argued” is about as meaningful as US charges that he was trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Nobody forced Saddam to initiate the Iran-Iraq War, though he was encouraged to do so by the US and the Gulf States. That was the so-called “dual containment” policy whereby we got Iran and Iraq fighting so they couldn’t present a united front against Israel. Saddam had no trouble suppressing his Shia population even after his military was wiped out in Gulf War I. You really think they were bothering him before his military and security services were wiped out by the US? Where did you read such foolish allegations?
Kuwait’s encouragement of the war, and their refusal to subsequently help Iraq financially, was one of the issues discussed by Saddam and April Glaspie when she told him the US was not interested in internal Arab squabbles. The other issue was Kuwaiti theft of Iraqi oil via slant drilling into Iraq’s oil fields.
Oh, well, if Saddam said he HAD to do it, that proves he only “technically” did it.
Iran was not allied with the Kurds. The reason they invaded Iraq in the mid-1970s and stationed a battalion there was because Kurdish nationalists were conducting raids into Iran from the Kurdish areas of Iraq.
The original occupation of Iraq spent billions on what were then called “enduring bases.” They always meant to do that.
I doubt that talk ever stopped. Obama would not let them call it that. As soon as he’s gone, they go back to saying what they always meant.
Iraqi forces were always set up as auxiliaries, without air or other heavy support that was to come from Americans. Small exceptions only highlight the rule. Of course they could have if we’d wanted them to, since they had huge forces before we attacked, and maintained such forces through the eight year long war with Iran.
Why do we insist? It is not just about Iraq. We mean Iraqi bases to be used in our next wars. We have big plans. The same is true in Afghanistan, on the other side of Iran and next door to China.
Has El Sadr approved?
Trump supporters are always quick to make the comparison to Obama. And that’s fair enough because the US never did intend to withdraw the occupation forces entirely.
Let’s just not allow the truth to be buried now that it’s Trump, the great white hope who’s making the decisions.
Just one of many articles posted every day that need to be brought to Raimondo’s attention in order to remind him what he supports in Trump!
So what else is new? Ask the Japanese, the Koreans, the Germans……..
I hope the Iraqis will again demand that US personnel be subject to Iraqi law in the SOFA. That was why Obama had to withdraw. If they start getting their arms from Russia and Iran, they may be less vulnerable to attack in the future.
Who gave you this right ?
As long as you keep invading these countries you will be spending billions to stay free and keep your country free.
How would you feel Russia invade your county?
Your country practically buncrupted because these allaged terrorist.