"The 3rd Iraq War is coming, and it will be ugly" Topic

"As I work on a more comprehensive, global forecast for the next 10 to 15 years, I try to avoid spending time on matters of immediate media interest. The war in Ukraine is an example. I will make an exception today as the topic is simply too important to ignore — war in Iraq.

When I wrote a guest editorial on the second Iraq War for Barron's in June 2004, Talking the Talk — Communication is the real failure in Iraq, my first paragraph pointed the finger at the person responsible for that war.

Who's being blamed for failure in Iraq? The list is long. George Bush. Dick Cheney. Donald Rumsfeld. Colin Powell. Paul Bremer. An assortment of generals and diplomats. Europeans. Iraqis. Other Arab leaders. And let's not forget Saddam Hussein, without whose lunatic regime none of this would have been possible…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

I dont see how it can be saddams fault; iraq was very stable while he was around and suspected militants had a short and unpleasant life expectancy. Admittedly that applied to a fair slice of the general population but the west has been happy enough to deal with and sponsor plenty of regimes as unpleasant as his – if moral objection was the reason for regime change we could have done it effectively after GW1.
Nope its George and Tonys fault

So, the current one isn't the 3rd?

Sorry, Saddam carries his large share of this. If he minded his own business and didn't stir the pot he would still be in Baghdad. But kicking off two major regional wars… Including a no-no grab for Kuwait. He got too greedy and that started the whole house of cards to tumble.

Thats kind of my point, if we'd deposed him after kuwait there would have been widespread support for it; the iraqi army had just received the mother of all kickings, no time to prepare an insurgency,pre AQ, arab allies and western publics all on board and a wide coalition of countries involved.An old fashioned conquest for old fashioned reasons everyone could see.

Instead we waited what, 9 years to give him another smack for reasons still nobody really believes.

Regardless whether it's called GWIII or not. As I have said before. Many, many of the belligerents of all sides plus scores of civilain losses will occur. With massive amounts of collateral damage to infastructure and again including massive amounts of non-combatant deaths. I'm sorry to say to cleanse the Deash plague effectively. Many, many, many will [have] to die. 99% of those being moslems of all factions, ethnicities, etc. … We may see horrendous losses. Not like we saw in WWII in MOUT. But close proportionately and/or against an enemy who is very much willing to die as did the most in the IJFs in places like Manila, Iwo, etc. … The Deash plague may only be "cured" with blood and death … lots and lots of it … Again Very sad to say, but I don't see any other options in the long or short run …

Yep and itll have to be muslims (sunnis probably)who do it, otherwise it just reinforces the isis world view. What we need is a "good" jihad.

After all the rethoric, we all know as you said, massive numbers of Western troops will only play into Deash's propaganda. The non-jihadi moslems, which from all sources cleary out number the jihadist terrorists. Regardless of what stats one hears or wants to believe. The "good moslems" need to go on an "Anti-Jihadi Jihad/Crusade" …

Let's do the job properly this time (1st get rid off the cheap tin badge running Big Eagle) then go in hard, and as they say in the Chronicles , ""
See elsewhere here on TMP why I'm ed off about . Right now are my number one target.

The best description of the current ME mess that I've heard is this: it's a lot like the Wars of Religion in Europe during the renaissance. Then it was various Christian sects killing one another in the name of God and conveniently for earthly wealth and power.

Now it's the fault lines between Islamic sects that are working themselves out after having been held together by decades of iron-fisted rulers regardless of their past allegiances to the west or the Soviets/Russia.

It's Persians and Shias and Arabs and Sunnis and various tribes and clans all fighting for their own reasons.

And in most cases these fault lines ignore borders drawn by European powers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This makes things even worse since various tribes, clans, ethnic groups, and religious sects had been granted extraordinary power through the drawing of these borders and each has something to lose in their dissolution.

Since you're dealing with violence motivated by individual beliefs in something that can't be objectively proven (i.e. any given god's will) the only resolution is either a willingness to let others believe what they want (unlikely in the ME since even in the U.S. that's going by the wayside on both sides of the aisle) or you subjugate/kill those who don't believe as you (more likely and something that sort of brought "peace" to Europe when everyone settled into their comfy, mostly religiously pure borders).

I don't think this is the right name for the the conflict. It's all over the middle east now: Libya, the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt too. Call it the DESH War because the is what it's becoming.

The keys to success of taking Mosul are vast, complex and rife with perils of collapsing due to the numerous factions that can't stand each other involved in this effort who must put their differences aside and cooperate in the short AND long term.

Because even if the invasion is successful, the uneasy alliance can fall apart among the various sunni, shiite and kurdish factions afterward and ISIS can bide their time before reasserting themselves and take Mosul back.

I see a seesaw "war with no end" situation here due to the political realities in the region. Sorry for being so pessimistic.

It should be called the War of the Eunuchs.

Look, George H. W. Bush had it right. Okay, a diplomatic gaff led Saddam to think that he could get away with invading Iraq. But Ol' Man Bush knew how to put together a proper coalition, and he understood the importance of not bringing Saddam down, disbanding his army, and throwing Iraq into utter chaos. The stability of the region hinged on this. Saddam was the one thing that everyone in the Middle East, Arab states, Israel, and the U.S. alike, all had in common. We all feared what he might do.

For reasons only he truly knows George W. Bush decided that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were unfinished business. Everything his father did right, he did wrong. He failed to get a real coalition, he rushed the land assault, wrecked Iraq's infrastructure, disbanded their army, and turned a country where al Qaeda could not go, into a country where it could.

Fact is, we are not entering the third war in Iraq. We're still fighting the first.

All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.

Agree with you.

Amicalement
Armand

It is Saddam's fault. He let himself be captured. Had we left him in place, things would be peaceful! Plus I am still waiting for the WMD to be discovered.

Perhaps you forgot about the Pentagon finally admitting that over 600 US service members have reported injuries from chemical weapons exposure during their time in Iraq? This doesn't include other coalition members, contractors or any Iraqis.

How exactly does someone get injuries from exposure to sarin or mustard agents if there are no WMDs around?

link
Will you next claim that the NY Times is a biased right wing organization?

I don't know if WMDs was grounds enough for an invasion of Iraq, but lets stick with the facts here.

@cwlinsj: But none of those WMDs actually found in Iraq leave a mushroom cloud in their wake, so they don't count.

Come on we'd known about gas for years before GW 2 was launched. The UK was told our bases in Cyprus could be hit by unspecified wmd within a 45 minute warning period. That was the clincher – we were lied to, you might as well face it.

Yeah, but the kicker was that he wasn't supposed to have ANY wmds. That was part of the ceasefire agreement and he could never prove to anyone's satisfaction that he was WMD free. That was agreement and he failed to live up to it. Toss in his regular USAF target shooting and you have a broken ceasefire.

What the Middle East is, resembles how it was in the middle ages, with Israel in the place of the Franks of Outremer, and Islam spread all around in their broken religious and ethnic factions, squabbling, fighting, killing each other, while occasionally "uniting" to attack the unbelievers (non Muslims of all kinds). Without a unity the fighting and chaotic destruction will continue indefinitely, just as it did before the Ottomans took control of the lot. ISIS is trying to establish an even more authentic regime than the Ottomans ever did. If ISIS succeeds in surviving, it will automatically prosper because of the basis for its establishment. Kill off ISIS. Then be prepared to kill off each and every other "successor" or rival caliphate that rears up in its place. That, too, could go on indefinitely. Nobody can tell how long by any gauge of prediction. Sending in "waves" or hordes of troops to engage in a land battle of conquest will accomplish nothing but deepening the issues with warring religious, ethnic and national/imperialist factions.

But if we back out and let it die out, it might not die out. The Caliphate might actually absorb, suppress and occupy every faction within Islam in the Middle East. And we have already seen that ISIS is extending its reach beyond the Middle East (Libya).

The best policy is to contain ISIS until it dies from the stranglehold. We don't need ground troops for that, only as much airpower as required to blast every effort of their military to strike out. Their economy will die along with their containment. Do it again, if and when required. The message should be clear enough: No caliphate, no unified, militant Islam, will be tolerated by the civilized world….