Why Are Iraq and Afghanistan Not Looking After Themselves?

[marmar]

from truthdig:


Why Are Iraq and Afghanistan Not Looking After Themselves?

Posted on Jan 15, 2014
By William Pfaff


What more than a decade ago was believed by Americans to be the omnipotence of the United States in the Middle East and Central Asia (the “Greater Middle East” as the Bush administration called it) is today being replaced by a fear that the United States not only has decisively lost its power in the region, but is also responsible for why everything seems to be going wrong.

President Barack Obama is being accused by some Republican members of Congress of responsibility not only for the jihadist reconquest of the twice-martyred city of Fallujah in Iraq, but also for the jihadist resurgence elsewhere.

What did he do in Iraq? He did what the Bush administration had promised to do: leave Iraq. He fulfilled his own election campaign promise, made in 2008, to complete the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and turn to Afghanistan.

The American military and the George W. Bush administration had set a nominally democratic but overwhelmingly Shiite government in Iraq. Mr. Obama is blamed for the fact that while the American command wanted to keep a security and training force of limited size in Iraq after the main withdrawal, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, refused to accept this on the only terms that the Pentagon would agree. These were that American forces remaining in Iraq would enjoy extraterritorial legal status, which is to say that they would be accountable only to their own commanders for crimes or offenses under Iraqi law, and in addition would enjoy extraordinary anti-terrorist powers over Iraqi civilians (such as invading their homes in a search mission). The prime minister found this an affront to the new Iraq’s sovereignty. ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_are_iraq_and_afghanistan_not_looking_after_themselves_20140115

[jsr]

1. First we need to help their leaders grow the Swiss bank accounts