ON Tuesday, President Obama authorised sending 350 additional military personnel to protect diplomatic facilities and personnel in Baghdad.
The White House claims that the troops will not play a combat role, however, coming on the back of a series of deployments aimed at ‘protecting’ the US embassy and other facilities in Iraq, one is left wondering just how much protection is going to be enough for America in Iraq.
The war hawks in the Pentagon, no doubt love all this increase in military presence in Iraq because it gives them relevance and of course means more profit for the American military industrial complex.
With the additional troops, the number of troops on diplomatic security detail in Iraq will rise to 820. The last addition was made in June.
President Obama is under immense political pressure to respond to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, especially now that it has executed yet another American journalist and released the video.
According to a statement from the White House, President Obama will be consulting with NATO allies regarding additional actions against ISIS.
Obama will also be looking to develop a broad based international comprehensive strategy to protect Americans and its allies in their fight against ISIS.
ISIS seems to be keeping the Pentagon awake these days.
Recently the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey said that there was need for a coalition in order to “squeeze ISIS from multiple directions in order to initially disrupt it and eventually defeat it”.
ISIS has shown itself to be brutal and America’s military power alone will not stop it.
In June, Secretary of State, John Kerry said America was not responsible for either the crisis in Libya or the violence in Iraq, where ISIS militants were capturing cities one by one.
At a press conference in Cairo following a short visit to Egypt’s newly elected President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Secretary Kerry urged Iraqi authorities to overcome sectarian considerations and restrain extremists.
America has been sending troops to assume “an advisory role” in dealing with the ISIS threat since it became apparent that Iraq was headed towards being a failed state.
But this entire clamour about ISIS can really be traced back to America’s front door.
On March 20 2003, America opened a military offensive against Iraq under the pretext that the Baathist Government of Saddam Huissen was harbouring weapons of mass destruction.
Claims that the world now knows were false, and somewhere I am sure the hunt for Saddam’s missing weapons of mass destruction is still under way (smirk). According to research by the Public Library of Science Medicine Journal published in October 2013, more than 460 000 deaths were caused by violence during the war and occupation of Iraq by America from March 2003 to mid -2011.
After the war was declared “over” and American troops began their withdrawal, Iraq was plunged into deeper sectarian strife between the country’s majority Shiite community and the Sunni minority.
Last year, 2013, was the bloodiest year in Iraq since 2008 with over 7 000 civilians becoming casualties to the war.
Of course Western politicians have been falling over themselves to distance the chaos and war in Iraq from their initial attack on Saddam Hussein that was the linchpin to the war for Iraq’s war.
Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair puts the current destabilisation of the region and the rising of ISIS on Iraqi authorities.
Blair wrote an essay in June of this year titled, Iraq, Syria and the Middle East, in which he said “We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ have caused this. We haven’t. We can argue as to whether our policies at points have helped or not; and whether action or inaction is the best policy and there is a lot to be said on both sides. But the fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it.”
The administrations of the US and the UK have continuously waged wars against Iraq since 1991.
Their forces have used different kinds and new generations of conventional, non conventional and illegal weapons against the population and environment of Iraq. The invasion and occupation of Iraq has proved to the world that oil flow was the main reason for aggression against Saddam.
So as Iraq goes up in flames, America and her people get to enjoy the rewards of her aggression.
One is even tempted to say, the Iraqis must be missing Saddam as their supposed liberators have turned their country into a nightmare.