US may repeat same inept blunders that caused lasting Iraq disaster : ISIS, WMD lies!

The deepening crisis in Iraq is a result of mistakes of US Middle East policy under two presidents. Washington does not learn from mistakes, so tensions inevitably will rise in the already disintegrating region.

 WMD lies
The regime change war of the George W. Bush administration against Iraq was arguably the greatest strategic mistake in US history. The consequences continue to unfold.

The Obama administration added fuel to the regional fire by launching the regime change wars against Libya and Syria. The flow of weapons and terrorists links these struggles.

The US public was outraged that the Obama administration considered a direct attack against Syria. The public today is becoming increasingly concerned about US involvement in yet another unnecessary Iraq war.

The present situation in Iraq must be placed in historic context. The British created the country after WWI from three former Ottoman provinces. The British strategic concept involved moving oil from the northern area of Mosul to Haifa in Palestine to be refined and then service the navy in the Mediterranean. Oil from the southern area of Basra was refined to service the navy in the Persian Gulf.

The northern area is one home of the Kurds, who are an ancient non-Arab ethnic group. The central area is traditionally the home of Sunni Arabs while the southern area is traditionally the home of Shiite Arabs.

The possibility of a breakup of this artificial state has always been present as the Kurds seek independence and the Shiite Arabs have religious ties to Iran. An Iraqi national identity was mostly held by secular political forces in the past.

In the aftermath of the war, the US dismantled the ruling Ba'ath political party, which ran the government apparatus. It also destroyed the Iraqi army. These two moves undermined national unity and stability in the post-war period.

The Obama regime change war against Syria has now morphed into a complex mess involving both Syria and Iraq. This explosive situation in turn threatens Jordan and Lebanon.

 ISIS in Iraq
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group with its many foreign fighters is a powerful actor in the present situation. But it must also be said that various Iraqi groups are also involved. These include former Iraqi military, political, and religious networks dissatisfied with the present Shiite-dominated government.

When the US toppled Saddam Hussein, it was inevitable that the next regime would be dominated by the Shiites who are the majority in Iraq. Experts at that time warned against the war, arguing that with Saddam's fall, Iran would become influential in Iraq through Shiite politicians.

The Shiite-dominated Maliki government has been heavy handed toward Sunni Arabs and Kurds. This counterproductive behavior set the stage for the present crisis which has been exploited by outside forces such as Saudi Arabia and Gulf states. They financially and militarily support the extremist Sunni terrorist organizations attacking the Shiites.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states also support the US regime change war in Syria. Support by these states for Sunni terrorists is part of a larger plan to bring the region under Saudi dominance.

It is no secret in Washington that pro-Israel neoconservatives for decades have been plotting the balkanization of Syria and Iraq. They see this process as good for Israel because it would break up its hostile neighbors into less threatening enclaves.

The results of Washington's incompetence may well provoke Iran into action to protect the Shiites of Iraq. Washington and Tehran may or may not be able to agree on a path forward.

The disintegrating situation in Iraq puts great pressure on Jordan.

Because Jordan is a key ally in the region one would expect Washington to bolster Amman and this could involve military forces.

US politicians have forced war and chaos on the Middle East and have learned nothing. Will Washington's Asian pivot lead to similar results?

- By Clifford A. Kiracofe Source:Global Times Published: 2014-6-26
The author is an educator and former senior professional staff member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

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Anti-American world-wide stirred up by US film 'Innocence of Muslims'

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Egyptian protesters threw stones at riot police officers during clashes near Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo on Friday.







Anti-American rage that began this week over a video insult to Islam spread to nearly 20 countries across the Middle East and beyond on Friday, with violent and sometimes deadly protests that convulsed the birthplaces of the Arab Spring revolutions, breached two more United States Embassies and targeted diplomatic properties of Germany and Britain.

The broadening of the protests appeared to reflect a pent-up resentment of Western powers in general, and defied pleas for restraint from world leaders, including the new Islamist president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, whose country was the instigator of the demonstrations that erupted three days earlier on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The anger stretched from North Africa to South Asia and Indonesia and in some cases was surprisingly destructive. In Tunis, an American-run school that was untouched during the revolution nearly two years ago was completely ransacked. In eastern Afghanistan, protesters burned an effigy of President Obama, who had made an outreach to Muslims a thematic pillar of his first year in office.

The State Department confirmed that protesters had penetrated the perimeters of the American Embassies in the Tunisian and Sudanese capitals, and said that 65 embassies or consulates around the world had issued emergency messages about threats of violence, and that those facilities in Islamic countries were curtailing diplomatic activity. The Pentagon said it sent Marines to protect embassies in Yemen and Sudan.

The wave of unrest not only increased concern in the West but raised new questions about political instability in Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle East countries where newfound freedoms, once suppressed by autocratic leaders, have given way to an absence of authority. The protests also seemed to highlight the unintended consequences of America’s support of movements to overthrow those autocrats, which have empowered Islamist groups that remain implacably hostile to the West.

“We have, throughout the Arab world, a young, unemployed, alienated and radicalized group of people, mainly men, who have found a vehicle to express themselves,” Rob Malley, the Middle East-North African program director for the International Crisis Group, a consulting firm, said in a telephone interview from Tripoli, Libya.

In a number of these countries, particularly Egypt and Tunisia, he said, “the state has lost a lot of its capacity to govern effectively. Paradoxically, that has made it more likely that events like the video will make people take to the streets and act in the way they did.

Some of the most serious violence targeted the compound housing the German and British Embassies in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, causing minor damage to the British property but major fire damage to the German one. The foreign ministers of both countries strongly protested the assault, which The Associated Press said had been instigated by a prominent sheik exhorting protesters to storm the German Embassy to avenge what he called anti-Muslim graffiti on Berlin mosques.

The police fired tear gas to repulse attacks in Khartoum, where about 5,000 demonstrators had massed, news reports said, before they moved on to the United States Embassy on the outskirts of the capital.

In Tunis, the United States Embassy was assaulted at midday by protesters who smashed windows and set fires before security forces routed them in violent clashes that left at least 3 dead and 28 hurt. Witnesses and officials said no Americans were hurt and most had left earlier.

The worst damage was inflicted on the American Cooperative School of Tunis, a highly regarded institution that, despite its name, catered mostly to the children of non-American expatriates, nearly half of whom work for the African Development Bank. School officials, who had sent the 650 students home early, said a few protesters scaled the fence and dismantled monitoring cameras, followed by 300 to 400 others, some of them local residents, who looted everything including 700 laptop computers, musical instruments and the safe in the director’s office, and then set the building on fire.

“It’s ransacked,” the director, Allan Bredy, said in a telephone interview. “We were thinking it was something the Tunisia government would keep under control. We had no idea they would allow things to go as wildly as they did.”

The school’s director of security, David Santiago, said a group of staff members formed a posse armed with baseball bats to chase lingering looters away hours after the assault. “Our elementary school library is burning as we speak,” he said angrily as he and his colleagues sought to assess the damage. “It’s complete chaos.

Thousands of Palestinians joined demonstrations after Friday Prayer in the Gaza Strip. Since there is no American diplomatic representation in Gaza, the main gathering took place in Gaza City, outside the Parliament building, where American and Israeli flags were placed on the ground for the crowds to stomp. Palestinians also clashed with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem and held protests in the West Bank.

Witnesses in Cairo said protests that first flared Tuesday grew in scope on Friday, with demonstrators throwing rocks and gasoline bombs near the American Embassy and the police firing tear gas. The Egyptian news media said more than 220 people had been injured in clashes so far.

In the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, where J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador, and three other Americans were killed Tuesday, militias fired rockets at what they thought were American drones overhead, prompting the government to temporarily close the airport as a precaution. The bodies of Mr. Stevens and the others killed in the Libya attack were returned to the United States on Friday.

In Lebanon, where Pope Benedict XVI was visiting, one person was killed and 25 were injured as protesters attacked restaurants. There was also turmoil in Yemen, Bangladesh, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, India, Pakistan and Iraq, and demonstrations in Malaysia. In Nigeria, troops fired into the air to disperse protesters marching on the city of Jos, Reuters reported. In Syria, about 200 protesters chanted anti-American slogans outside the long-closed American Embassy in Damascus, news reports said.

In the Egyptian Sinai, a group of Bedouins stormed an international peacekeepers’ camp and set fire to an observation tower, according to Al Ahram Online, a state-owned, English-language Web site. Three people, two Colombians and one Egyptian, were injured in the ensuing clashes.

In Yemen, baton-wielding security forces backed by water cannons blocked streets near the American Embassy a day after protesters breached the outer security perimeter there, and officials said two people were killed in clashes with the police. Still, a group of several dozen protesters gathered near the diplomatic post, carrying placards and shouting slogans.

In Iraq, where the heavily fortified American Embassy sits on the banks of the Tigris River inside Baghdad’s Green Zone and is out of reach to most Iraqis, thousands protested after Friday Prayer in Sunni and Shiite cities alike.

Raising banners with Islamic slogans and denouncing the United States and Israel, Iraqis called for the expulsion of American diplomats from the country and demanded that the American government apologize for the incendiary film and take legal action against its creators.

In Egypt, in particular, leaders scrambled to repair deep strains with Washington provoked by their initial response to attacks on the American Embassy on Tuesday, tacitly acknowledging that they erred in their response by focusing far more on anti-American domestic opinion than on condemning the violence.

The attacks squeezed Mr. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood between conflicting pressures from Washington and their Islamic constituency at home, a senior Brotherhood official acknowledged. During a 20-minute phone call Wednesday night, Mr. Obama warned Mr. Morsi that relations would be jeopardized if the authorities in Cairo failed to protect American diplomats and stand more firmly against anti-American attacks

On Friday, Mr. Morsi, on a scheduled state visit to Rome, called attacks on foreign embassies “absolutely unacceptable.”

By RICK GLADSTONE