Are we backing the wrong horse in Iraq??

[kentuck]

At the moment, ISIS is our #1 enemy, to hear the Washington media tell it.

However, some people will say that they have their eye more on Baghdad than on America. They are also sworn enemies of Al Qaeda, many of them made up of former Sunni Baathists. They hate the Baghdad government and Maliki and the way they were treated after the Americans left. Also, they want to overthrow Assad in Syria.

America is tilting at windmills if we think Maliki will ever again be our ally. He is wedded to the Shiite leadership in Iran. It is foolish to help him out of a mess that he created.

American interests would seem to be best served by helping ISIS create their own state. The foreign policy experts will say that their focus is more on Iraq at the moment than on attacking America. It seems to me that we are betting on the wrong horse? History will tell, I suppose?

[kentuck]

2. That may be the majority opinion?

and the best answer?

[customerserviceguy]

13. How do you sort out who the 'good' side is?

All have policies that if implemented would be detrimental to women, gays, and members of minority ethnicities. At this point, letting them fight it out among themselves is the only way they'll get sick of war. Our involvement in picking a side would be just as counterproductive as the Chinese getting involved in the Catholic-Protestant conflicts in Europe during the Reformation.

[kentuck]

17. Good vs Bad?

I'm not sure of the degrees of separation when we are talking about the Middle East. When we think back to Abu Graib, renditioning, Guantanamo Bay, etc, maybe the good vs bad argument may not be as stark as we might think?

[customerserviceguy]

24. And you make my point

Even if there were a 'good' side, we're so f'd up that we have no moral standing to decide who that would be.

Best to leave them alone, and if we ever get a usable target that truly threatens us, we have the means to deal with it from afar. I don't want another American to have to die playing kindergarten cop among a bunch of religious zealots ever again.

[tecelote]

4. Wow!

I was going to say the same thing.

Hasn't history proven that we don't know what the hell we're doing in the Middle East?

[ShadowLiberal]

21. Espcially with Maliki in charge, Maliki is a horrible leader

No matter how much military and financial backing we give Iraq's government, it can't make up for Maliki's incompetence and scandals. Even if we fix things Maliki will just screw it all up again.

[kentuck]

22. I don't think Maliki will ever leave on his own volition?

He has the backing of the ayatollahs in Iran.

[KentuckyWoman]

28. I'd also like to see us get our nose out of everyone else's business

Unfortunately the 1%ers that own our government can get middle class taxpayers to shoulder the financial burden so the 1% can get and keep the world's resources.

Part of that whole small government when it comes to profits and big government when it comes to the losses.

I suspect there are 1%ers that are the leaders of other countries half way round the world actually pulling the strings in the US on Iraq though. As in Saudi......

[herding cats]

3. Or we could simply remove ourselves from the proxy wars between the Saudis and Iran.

That would be our best course of action here, IMO.

[Takket]

5. THREE STATE SOLUTION THREE STATE SOLUTION THREE STATE SOLUTION THREE STATE SOLUTION THREE STATE SOLU

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. It'd be everyone's lucky day if we WERE backing horses.

Right horse, wrong horse. Any kind of horse would be better than backing *people*.

People whose history and mindset we do not and CANNOT understand.

As confused as our understanding was about Vietnam, and as complicated as the dynamics of that situation were.... VN was infinitely LESS complicated than trying so sort out the fallout from the break-up of the Ottoman Empire.

Frankly... we're not that smart. And by "we" I mean, especially, our policymakers.

We killed... or helped kill a million + in VN and Cambodia.

What's our final tally going to be in the middle east?

[kentuck]

12. Lost souls in the desert...

Arguing amongst themselves about who made the wrong turn??

[RobertEarl]

8. Meanwhile in the US

We have a supreme court that steals elections, grants untold power to corporations, is trying to have the last say over women's bodies and ignores our biggest criminals.

At least we have civilized mayhem and murder. Iraq should be so lucky?

The best thing we can do is mind our own business. And get off our addiction to oil.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

9. For me, the religious fundamentalist side is the wrong horse

Unfortunately I don't think that leaves a right horse. I'd just pull out and leave the fundamentalist religious savages to their dark ages mentality.

[tecelote]

10. Also... why is war in sovereign countries more important than our own people.

Have you seen what we have done to our working poor? To our children's education? To our Native people? The list goes on.

War should not be more important than our people and children.

America's priorities have taken her to the depths of evil I never thought possible.

One nation, under Satan for profit and the misery of all.

[craigmatic]

11. In the Middle East we should be on the Sunni's side just from a numbers perspective.

We need to wait and see what ISIS is going to do just because these Islamic groups will turn on the US just like what happened in Afghanistan.

[kentuck]

14. I guess the theory of "compassionate colonialism" just doesn't work?

[reddread]

15. we are the wrong horse

from WMD and yellow cake to this very moment.

[kentuck]

19. You may be right?

Most might agree with you?

[bemildred]

16. There is no right horse, their politics is none of our fucking business and it never was. nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

18. It's a sucker bet. No matter which horse we bet on...we lose.

[pfitz59]

20. Let the Iraqis sort it out

Why should "we" care?

[riderinthestorm]

23. Gambling on the ponies is a bad idea, at the local racetrack and on a global scale. nt

[Bonhomme Richard]

25. Hey, we backed the correct horse when we backed the Shah, Somoza... right? n/t

[Retrograde]

26. I think you got the tense wrong

We never backed the right horse in the first place, IMHO. The Bush regime was too focused on near-term goals - ousting Saddam Hussein, securing oil lines, and enriching Halliburton and friends - that we took little or no note of who the long-term players and their issues were. The NYT this week had a long article on Chalabi 's possible comeback, which made me shiver.

A poster upthread had a good analogy: it's like the Chinese having to pick sides in Europe's Thirty Years' War. The Shi'a/Sunni split goes back a millennium, there are British post-colonial political divisions on top of that, and ISIS just wants to make matters worse for the remaining reasonable people in the area.

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. Satire?

There was reason until the final paragraph. Then you leapt into George Bush style nuttery of needing to support someone - anyone - and ignoring their record as a mass murderer.

[kentuck]

30. That was my purpose.

[Aerows]

29. If we back ANY horse in Iraq

It's the wrong horse. The more we meddle there, the worse it gets.

[libodem]

31. Who really knows

I don't trust any American news source. I am convinced every scandal on the current news circuit is manufactured to sway our opinion, in the manner our overlords in the Oligarchy wish it. No kidding. I know it makes me sound crazy but I feel like I'm straight up being lied to. Especially when Dick Cheney trots out that horrible daughter. Brace yourself.....it's coming. Then all the rest of them are out with their scripts to. All these neocons, who should be in jail are back again pleading for an influx of tax dollars to the MIC.

Pffft. I hope the Masters of War know what they are doing. In this world, ISIS could be a cover for the CIA and all our news is disinformation. Look how they went straight to the refinery and started protecting it. I believe nothing.

[WatermelonRat]

32. The only horse I'd feel comfortable backing would be the Kurds

[Chan790]

33. The problem herein...

and the one that most of DU doesn't seem to grasp...is that whether we want to be or not, we're in this mess. The time to not be involved was when we invaded in the first place; that time has passed and it is no longer an available option. You can't unbreak an egg, so to speak.

We cannot simply throw up our hands and say "Yeah, we're not going to be involved." We're involved whether we want to be or not because we've made enemies of these people by fucking their country up. That's not going away if we refuse to take sides now...we waded into this mess and much like the horse waded midstream of a roaring river, the options are pick a side or suffer the consequences with no upside.

Whether we will it or not, we are willy-nilly in this up to our fucking ears. We might as well conscientiously pursue the best possible outcome of the shitstack we've made of the Middle East. Once we've done that, we should learn our lesson and stop starting armed conflicts on dubious grounds.

[TheKentuckian]

36. What is the best possible outcome that should be pursued and why do you define it as such?

How much is the "investment" (aka throwing scarce resources into a black hole), for how long, how many have to killed, maimed, displaced for what outcome?

[Chan790]

37. I honestly have only the barest notion of a "best possible outcome"...

but I'm pretty sure that it does not include letting a group like ISIS whose goals include striking against the West (e.g. The United States and Europe) in the West gain a foothold.

I don't view destroying ISIS as a resource-heavy objective, especially since we probably don't have to dedicate troops on the ground to it as much as logistical support and they have plenty of local enemies that are both willing and capable to do the heavy lifting. Beyond providing support for taking ISIS out of the picture, it's probably best to let them hash it out for themselves.

We don't have a vested interest in who wins as long as ISIS loses...because an ISIS win means the future inevitability of attacks against the US and US interests abroad. We can't unilaterally declare people like that "not our enemy" or "not our problem" and expect them to respect that as the end of a conflict they actively want.

[TheKentuckian]

39. Ahh...The old rotating villain whack a mole gambit. Fight over there so we don't have to fight them

over here.

[Chan790]

42. You do realize that sometimes it's actually true, right? n/t

[Comrade Grumpy]

34. Help ISIS create their own state? Are you insane?

ISIS is a murderous sectarian fundamentalist organization too nasty even for Al Qaeda. It represents a particularly virulent strain of Saudi Sunni religious ideology. It certainly doesn't represent mainstream Sunni Islam or most Sunnis.

Aiding ISIS would likely turn out about like the aftermath of our aiding Islamic radicals in Afghanistan in the 1980s. At best.

ISIS needs to be wiped out, not helped. Whether we should be the ones to do it is another question. Personally, I'd like to see them squeezed out of existence by Assad on one side and Iraq and Iran on the other.

[kentuck]

38. Where did you hear this?

Worse than Al Qaeda? They are more of a threat to Iraq, Syria, and Iran than they are to us. Why should we help any of the above? So far, what are their great atrocities?

[Comrade Grumpy]

41. Here's where Al Qaeda washes its hands of ISIS:

"Al-Qaeda disavows any ties with radical Islamist ISIS group in Syria, Iraq"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/al-qaeda-disavows-any-ties-with-radical-islamist-isis-group-in-syria-iraq/2014/02/03/2c9afc3a-8cef-11e3-98ab-fe5228217bd1_story.html

As for their atrocities, they have been numerous in Syria, including public beheadings, crucifixions, the torture and murder of a boy in Aleppo for joking about Islam. In Iraq, well, there's the well-publicized mass execution of 170 Iraqi prisoners of war, as well as numerous other mass executions and killings, of which we are aware because of these guys' penchant for making snuff porn videos, a la the Mexican drug cartels. And the kidnapping of dozens of Kurdish school boys. And the destruction of Shia, Sufi, and even some Sunni shrines in Ninevah. You can Google all this stuff.

I don't think they're much of a direct threat to us, although some of those foreign jihadis, including maybe a hundred or so from the US, may not achieve martyrdom in the Middle East and end up coming back home.

But they are most definitely a threat to Iraq and Syria, although not Iran. And Jordan and Saudi Arabia are starting to get nervous. None of these regimes are ideal, but I view ISIS as particularly brutal, backwards and barbaric. They are a potential global threat, with global ambitions. They need to get snuffed right now.

Do we need to be the ones to do it? I would prefer not. But maybe we should at least get out of Iran's way. Or Israel's.

[CJCRANE]

35. We should support them with one hand

and fight them with the other hand.

[MisterP]

40. plus we're simultaneously backing the ISIS horse right on the other side of the border

we WERE warned