Frontline "Escaping ISIS" shows failure of Bush Iraqi Invasion
Although the purpose of the documentary was to show the plight of hundreds if not thousands of Yazidi women and girls who have been taken prisoner by ISIS, the implication is exactly what we critics of the Iraqi War warned of so many years ago--once Saddam Hussein is knocked off, what does Iraq look like?
Those of us who remember what happened to French Indo-China after the US pulled out of its futile war there had a pretty fair model to use for Iraq. Indo-China turned into "the killing fields" as factions fought for dominance and victorious war-lords terrorized the population into submission and wreaked vengeance on its former foes.
In the even more unstable Middle East, we see the same scenario writ large.
This documentary, although not explicitly making the connection, shows exactly what's happening now that Ba'athist government has been overthrown. The Sunni faction of the military refuses to fight for the Shia leaders of Iraq, who have treated the Sunnis like shit for the past ten years. The Kurds have declared autonomy in the north, which Turkey fears because of its own large Kurdish minority. The Christians, with congregations going back to the very beginning of the movement 2000 years ago, have been virtually extirpated. Syria is completely embroiled in a confused civil war, so much so that the US government can't seem to decide which side to support or oppose.
Meanwhile, the over-arching rationale by which the Iraq invasion was justified--fighting Islamic terrorism--has been stood on its head as we watch ISIS seize one Iraqi town after another toward their ultimate goal of an Islamic caliphate, something that could have never happened under Saddam Hussein.
Bush's elective war in Iraq has had exactly the worst effects that anti-war critics predicted it would have: massive loss of life, a power vacuum leading to horrific factional strife, an increase in terrorist influence and control of the region, and many hundreds of thousands caught up in famine, pestilence, and displacement.
Last night's film put a human face on what we through our participatory democracy have set in motion in the Middle East.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs-defense/escaping-isis/watch-on-slave-market-day-isis-trades-women-for-cash-weapons/
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