Why is Obama bombing Iraq, Really?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/strategically-troops-ground.html

Why is Obama bombing Iraq, Really?
By Juan Cole | Aug. 9, 2014

Al-Zaman reports that a US drone hit mortar emplacements and F-18s struck artillery arrays and armored vehicles deployed by the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) in Kuwair east of Mosul on the way to the Kurdistan capital of Irbil, and near a major dam, some ares of which are controlled by the IS fighters.

Also on Friday, the Naqshbandi Army denied any involvement in a push on the Kurdistan capital of Irbil, denouncing it as racist. The Naqshbandi Sufi order is important in Mosul and was infiltrated and used by agents of Baathist high official Izzat al-Duri, a former vice president of Saddam Hussein. The Naqshbandis are said to be nowadays having tensions with the so-called Islamic State, with which they allied to kick al-Maliki’s largely Shiite government out of Mosul.

Apparently the White House felt it urgent to intervene because IS leaders were eying a conquest of Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. When I heard this, I thought of the old 1980s film, “Gallipoli.” Churchill advanced a strategy for a short campaign against the Ottoman Empire, wherein troops would be landed at the Gallipoli peninsula and march straight up to the nearby capital, Istanbul. Churchill’s plan failed because Mustafa Kamal Attaturk kept the British army from advancing, deploying against the British troops the machine gun.

Likewise, IS was thinking of just going up to Irbil and decapitating the government of Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader.