What ever happened to Iraq? Is it not an independent country with a democratic government thanks to the 2003 US invasion? So says Washington.
The murder of senior Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani suddenly shone a strobe light on ‘independent’ Iraq, and what we saw was not pretty.
Welcome to the new Imperialism 101.
Iraq’s population is estimated around 39 million. The pre-war Iraq of 2003 was broken into three parts by the US-British invasion: the Shia majority; Kurds in the north; and Sunnis, with scatterings of other ethnicities. Iraq remains fragmented into hostile groups.
Its Shia are confusingly allied to the US and Iran. The killing of Maj. Gen. Soleimani by the Americans has thrown this alliance of convenience into confusion. Iraqi Kurds are close to the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence. The Sunnis are left adrift, without any foreign patrons except for other feeble Arab states.
The US maintains a modest garrison of 5,000 infantry in Iraq and 3-5 air bases, as well as the gigantic fortified US Embassy in Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone which contains one of the world’s largest CIA bases. Angry mobs demonstrating in front of the embassy triggered off the chain of events that led to Trump’s murder of Gen. Soleimani. That an impeached president should be murdering foreign figures is a question that Congress must ask.
Before he was murdered, Osama bin Laden called this monster Baghdad embassy and its twin in Kabul, `crusader fortresses.’ That is indeed their role, and to serve as the nerve center for all Mideast operations by the US. Iraq enjoys some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Where the profit from Iraq’s mammoth oil exports go remains a closely guarded secret.
Combined with Saudi Arabia – also controlled by the US – Iraq gives Washington control of the bulk of Mideast oil. The US no longer relies on oil from the Mideast, being self-sufficient – at least for now. But dominating the Mideast gives the US huge influence over China, Japan, India, and Europe, all of whom import oil from there. This is the main pillar of US world power and the supremacy of the dollar.
Returning to Iraq, Washington has imposed an air exclusivity zone there. Real control of flat, largely barren Iraq comes from the air. US war planes based there and in Qatar can blast anything that moves in Mesopotamia. Imperial Britain ruled Iraq the same way, using the RAF to smash all opposition to the British-installed puppet ruler in Baghdad. In the 1920’s Churchill even authorized the RAF to use poison gas against rebellious Iraqi Kurds (as well as Afghan Pashtun tribes).
US-ruled Iraq is not allowed to have a real air force, only a handful of light aircraft. The same ban applies to Afghanistan. Iraq’s so-called army, a mob of unruly militias of the type the Ottomans used to call ‘bashi-bazouks,’ is of little military value though partly equipped by US weapons. They are increasingly being attacked by US warplanes.
The US really runs Iraq from three large air bases that were the target of the recent bloodless Iranian missile attacks. Iraq’s current US-approved prime minister Abdul-Mahdi and its feeble parliament have voted for the ouster of all US forces from Iraq. Good luck to them. Washington will likely ignore Iraq’s supposedly ‘democratic’ government and continue to act as the sultan of Iraq.
Iraq has become the central military base and inexhaustible oil reservoir for the US that was envisaged by the Bush administration and its neocons. That is a major step in the total US domination of the Mideast and its energy resources.
Israel has achieved its long sought goal of removing Iraq from the confrontation over Palestine. With Egypt under a US-imposed dictator, that leaves only demolished Syria to stand up to Israel. The Saudis are gleefully stabbing their ‘brother’ Arabs in the back, as they always have done.
Never in the past half-century have we seen the Arab states so pathetically feeble. Never have we seen Israel so strongly guiding US Mideast policy, including the murder of Gen. Soleimani.
Source: the author’s blog
Osama bin Laden was “murdered”? Soleymani too was innocent of taking innocent life? There is no point in discussing what are facts, if you have an ideological prejudgment against organizing retaliatory/defensive force, and in favor of organizing predatory force. The US must be involved in countering Jihadism, or submit to political Islam. Political observers should be guided by a fusion of inductive facts and deductive logic.
The US does not need to control middle eastern oil. America has large deposits of shale oil and coal. If the price of oil were to rise, the US and other producers would benefit, net. The US deep water navy should be financed by user fees, in exchange for protecting international trade and investments.
Kevin: The US was ‘involved’ in creating jihadism and politicising Islam in the first place! The CIA was responsible for creating the Mujahideen in Pakistan and Afghanistan and continues (together with Britain, France and Israel) to nurture and protect ISIS and its many off-shoots across the world, including its ‘civil’ wing, the White helmets. Get your facts right please
Yes, Dela, I understand and accept your points. Please understand I am not with the US government (or the Time Police) and don’t necessarily favor everything that has happened in our timeline.
US involvement can’t be in the “first place” with regard to Islam (whether with the personal self-improvement Jihad or the external Jihad against infidels). For one thing, most successful Jihads occurred before the US was born.
Unfortunately, Reagan didn’t recognize the potential for danger in religion, particularly one with a strong faith-force fusion. So yes, he did subsidize the worst elements in the anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan. In hindsight, the US should have stayed out of that conflict, because as we now know, Soviet communism was less threatening than Jihad. In any event, the Soviet system would have collapsed (somewhat later) due to it’s own economic inefficiency.
The White Helmets are a Soros operation, which the US and Israel should disavow. “Islamic State” (“ISIS” or “Daesh”) etc.–those are just names. Membership in various Jihad groups has considerable overlap, and shifts.
Infidels have a sad history of thinking they can weaken infidel rivals by making deals with some Jihadist faction(s). So then the rival infidels make deals with a competing Jihad faction. The end result is always the same, when infidels are divided that leads to their defeat, because of too many fronts. The Jihadists they hire will eventually betray their infidel benefactors.
So, the US allying with Sunnis and Russia allying with Shia–that’s a re-run of an old movie. Time for a new script.