Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford says that the Pentagon is considering a “long-term commitment” to operations in Iraq, intending to keep troops in the country after the ISIS war, with an eye toward keeping Iraq’s military propped up.
Exactly what form this would take remains to be seen, as the US already has thousands of ground troops in Iraq, and they have already made a point to say that their existing operation has “no fixed end date.” US officials have previously indicated that the US would likely be in Iraq more or less forever, believing ISIS or something similar would crop up if the US was ever not occupying the nation.
Dunford’s comments suggest the US is considering something above and beyond this, but might portend both an increase in US military aid to Iraq and an even bigger deployment of ground troops in a nation-building capacity, though this would clearly run contrary to President Trump’s position that the US is spending too much money having troops abroad in so many different countries.
It does, however, explain why the Pentagon has been comfortable with pushing Iraq’s anti-ISIS military offensive across the Sunni Arab parts of the country, despite little to no serious effort being made to end the sectarian unrest that set the stage for ISIS’ original capture of those regions. Keeping the Iraqi Sunnis pacified is going to be an open-ended job, and it’s a job the Pentagon leadership is fine with taken up.
It will be interesting to see. On going occupations never work. The issue is not sectarian — it is a consequence of carefull work of several years to stir it up. And it happened only after Petreaus armed Sunnis in a project Sunni Awakening — after which mysteriously dead Shia turned up mysteriously in mass graves. That is called priming the pump. Without paying huge money to create various Salafi/Wahhabi cults — we would not have the plague of barbarism in the Middle East. So, time to pull the plug on financing and arming, and those rhat belong to Iraqi tribes would just go home, others will scamper around the globe until extinguished. Now I understand why they did not want Pentagon and intelligence at every SA merting. These guys think they can make POLICY decisions. Sure, it will take time, and sure no need for advertising departure dates. But there is no need to advertise a permanent ovcupstion, as if praying for another wave of resistance. The key is no more funding “rebels”, let Iraq start managing its territory and involve regional countries to help. Like Iran and Turkey. But time is high to stop looking for excuses to stay for ever. Let other countries have the honor of spending THEIR OWN MONEY on securing their region.
“On going occupations never work.”
Define “work.”
If the goal is to funnel money to favored cronies on a continuous basis, ongoing occupations work perfectly — all kinds of consumables to be constantly re-stocked, multiple wearouts/replacements of vehicle and weapons inventory, permanent bases to be built, staffed, maintained and expanded, etc.
The primary mission of the US government since World War II has been to continuously transfer as much wealth as possible from the pockets of the productive class to the bank accounts of “defense” contractors. Viewed from the standpoint of that mission, the occupation of Afghanistan has been wildly successful.
Betsy Devos’ Brother is Erik Prince, who founded Blackwater.
https://theintercept. com/2017/01/17/notorious-mercenary-erik-prince-is-advising-trump-from-the-shadow
In September, Prince backed Trump’s proposal to commandeer Iraq’s 2 million barrels of daily oil output. “For Mr. Trump to say, ‘We’re going to take their oil — certainly we’re not going to lift it out of there and take it somewhere else, but putting it into production, and putting a tolling arrangement into place, to repay the American taxpayers for their efforts to remove Saddam and to stabilize the area, is doable, and very plausible,” Prince said on Breitbart Radio.
Well said Terry! This understanding has been a long time coming.
It’s taken so long because the truth has always been avoided because it leads Americans to the conclusion that their wars are just outright aggression.
Why has it taken so longat antiwar.com? Did it only require the right article to be written here by Jason Ditz?
a good possibility
An Americans has to talk in terms of defense contractors or the MIC in short. That’s because they always have a reluctance to talk in terms of their own country pursuing world domination. Think in terms of military force to gain economic control over the world’s resources.
So start thinking in terms of 20,000,000 barrels of oil a day US consumption. Then think of the future if the world’s oil resources fall into the hands of the Brics. Or, more to the point China.
The MIC or the ‘defense contractors’ explanation doesn’t adequately explain the US fixation on the ME. And neither does it explain the positions on ME control on the part of Russia and China.
As I’ve always maintained Thomas, the US is not in Iraq for the fall’s cabbage crop.
I agree. The other success is the “kneecapping” of Middle Eastern nations, preventing them from establishing competitive societies. Want to know the policy ? Study organized crime.
I wonder if perhaps we might wish to stay to help them manage their resources and ultimately spend the money for them .
long term? Has the last 27 years been short term?
By my description, we are currently fighting the 5th Iraq War. The 1st Iraq War was Bush Sr’s war to invade Iraq. The 2nd Iraq War was Clinton’s sanctions campaign with lots of real bombs dropped on Iraq. The 3rd Iraq War was Dubya/Cheney’s war against Saddam’s military. The 4th Iraq War was Dubya/Cheney/Obama/Clintons subsequent war against an Iraq insurgency. The 5th Iraq War was/is Obama/Trumps war against ISIS, which just happens to be in the same places and against basically the same people as we fought in the 4th Iraq War, with some carry-overs from the first 3 Iraq Wars.
The problem the propganda system has, and the reason why they don’t refer to these wars in this fashion, is that this starts to sound a lot like the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th Battles of Isonzo during WW1. And of course, its hard to explain why we are fighting the 5th Iraq War since we were told that we won the first 4 Iraq Wars all with tremendous victories.
They are not wars; they are slaughters.
If US military will leave Iraq, the Shia government would start to think about better oil contracts and eventually will replace US and UK corporations by Lukoil or something else.
Many of Iraq neighbours, the same as US, don’t want any closer cooperation between Iraq and Iran. Iraq-Iran union with help of Russia-China can reshape the whole region.
maybe even reshape the whole world ?
Why are these guys volunteering policy recmmendations publicly? Are they trying to set the battlefield aka “bums-rush”. So, the unlearned lessons of Vietnam, where the south didn’t stand up, we’re going to stay indefinitely and slop up all the tax payer dough and career advancement opportunities (pad the pension with promotions) we can, while fighting the proxy army of our allys the Saudis. Same old shit, different day.
Will our presidents then become “Emperors of Iraq”?
If the US system was working properly, the correct response would be “this is not your job”. The US system supposedly has civilian control of the military. In the US system, supposedly direction and strategy is set by the elected, civilian government. Its not the job of some general. Its not the job of the Pentagon. This general’s job is supposed to be to take the resources he’s given by the civilian controlled government and to perform the task assigned to him by the civilian controlled government. Its not the general’s job to make decisions about the long-term commitment to Iraq. Its not the Pentagon’s job either.
I don’t remember seeing this general’s name on a ballot last fall. If he wants to decide something like America’s long-term commitment to Iraq, then he needs to resign his commission in the US military and then stand for office and get himself elected.
“Civilian controlled government”… Hahahahahahaha!
Germany, Japan, South Korea, now Iraq.
15 years is already long term.
We’ve been in Iraq near four times the length of our involvement in WW2, seven times our involvment in WW1, near four times the length of our own Civil War.
I have never felt it was about stealing their oil. We don’t need it, our major oil supplier is Canada, with Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Mexico following.
No, what America wants is ‘control’ of who that oil is sent to. Since almost 90% of Gulf oil stays in Asia and the number one buyer is China, followed by Japan, India and SE Asia, it is obvious why we would want control of Iraq’s oil. The control of and shutting down of Japan’s petroleum imports led to Pearl Harbor.
You’re getting warm! Control of ME oil is the same as owning it. Control over that oil and control of prices was essential for the US and will remain so. If not then the US would withdraw from the ME.
Think of terrorists not pursuing terrorism as much as terrorists wanting control of their countries back.
George H.W. Bush started all this.
That coincided coincidentally with the fall of the Soviet Union.
There is no doubt that the US will do what is necessary to maintain complete control over Iraq. If the powers that be in Iraq are not sympathetic to the US then the US will have to maintain forces in Iraq to keep the order the US demands.
If not then Russia and China move in. And the hell of it is, Russia and China will likely be invited in.
On the bright side, this all leads to a future possibility of stability in the long term of years. Russia and China will control their sphere of influence in the ME and the US (west) will control theirs.
The respective spheres of influence have yet to be determined, but we can make an educated guess on which countries will be whose?
It’s a long-term commitment to keep Iraqi pain alive.
So the American taxpayer, and the Fed is funding the Pentagon, DOD, 14 intelligence agencies, CIA, DHS, NATO, Israel, Iraqis army, Afghanistan army, Syrian rebels , ISIS, Libyan army,Ukraine Neo Nazi army, – did I miss anyone ?
Look for Bannon to find ways to surge both Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran in the middle.