Iraq seeking new U.S. aid after pushing out troops

[unhappycamper]

http://kdhnews.com/news/nation/iraq-seeking-new-u-s-aid-after-pushing-out-troops/article_4574ff0e-41e4-11e3-b5ed-001a4bcf6878.html



Iraq seeking new U.S. aid after pushing out troops
Posted: Thursday, October 31, 2013 4:30 am
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Nearly two years after pushing out the U.S. military, Iraq is asking for more American weapons, training and manpower to help fight a bloody resurgence of al-Qaida that has unleashed a level of violence comparable to the darkest days of the nation’s civil war.

The request will be discussed during a White House meeting Friday between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Barack Obama in what Baghdad hopes will be a fresh start in a complicated relationship marked by victories and frustrations for each side.

“We know we have major challenges of our own capabilities being up to the standard. They currently are not,” Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We need to gear up, to deal with that threat more seriously. We need support and we need help.”

~snip~

“Boots on the ground” means military forces. The U.S. withdrew all but a few hundred of its troops from Iraq in December 2011 after Baghdad refused to renew a security agreement to extend legal immunity for Americans forces that would have let more stay.

[bemildred]

1. Iraq is trying to make itself governable again.

For that it needs an end to the foreign presence, and funding, and most likely some help with defense. And even then it will likely fail at this point.

[SDjack]

2. Someone needs to protect the oil fields being exploited by Chinese companies. Idea! --

leave that job to China.

[True Blue Door]

3. The problem is that Iraq is basically three countries unified only by an ineffective bureaucracy.

The three have little regard for each other, and a rapidly dwindling sense of common identity (if there ever was one). We obviously should never have invaded, and had no right to do so, but once the deed was done what followed should have been an orderly, UN-guided process of establishing three sovereign countries - not trying to add a new coat of paint to the flimsy structure of a fictitious nation called "Iraq." It seems the region is destined for a Balkans-like process of separation, and the choice they have to make is how painful and prolonged it's going to be for them.

Separation is already the ground truth in Iraq. If you've watched documentaries about the Kurdish region, you know it's shockingly nice, orderly, and well-developed - better than a lot of places in Eastern Europe, let alone the Middle East. They're already basically independent, but are forced to maintain a fictional allegiance to allay Turkish fears of Kurdish separatism - hardly a legitimate justification for denying what is already the case.

And, of course, there's the mess between the Shias and Sunnis in the rest of Iraq, especially in Baghdad. The capital city would be the biggest knot to unravel since it's diverse, but sooner or later they have to deal with the reality they're not one people and the bad blood just keeps building on itself.

The world did a very foolish thing trying to impose the continuation of a unified Iraq through a well-armed government. All that's going to do is make the eventual breakup even more chaotic, as the arms and training of the government are disseminated into the various camps and extremist groups among them.