Our clear as mud Iraq strategy.
Living life like a comatose / Ego loaded and swallow, swallow, swallow
At times, everything seems to descend into parody. This, for instance, has to be a piss-take, an anonymous record producer making fun of a relatively new genre, a track made with a smile, the creator certain everyone will get the joke. It gets best new music on Pitchfork, Boomkat describes it as "exquisite ear candy ... visionary pop architecture" and even Resident Advisor approves. If this turn of events discombobulated the producer (whom last year put out this pleasing slice of house) then he seems to have just gone with it. After all, why not?
By the same token, David Cameron surely didn't think he'd get away with his article for the Sunday Telegraph. He (or whichever adviser/hanger-on wrote it) writes we can't let ourselves be imprisoned by the events of 10 years ago, and he has a point. Just because we've had a major hand in Iraq being in the mess it now is doesn't mean we shouldn't return and help Johnny Kurd push back the ethnic cleansers of the Islamic State. Besides, we're not going to put "boots on the ground", just as we didn't in Libya. If we so choose to bomb a few Islamic State positions, or more accurately described, vehicles, as they seem to be the main targets the Americans have chosen to obliterate thus far, we should know that doing so is all the more likely to prevent the Islamic State from becoming a threat here. Just think what might happen if we sat this one out. A positively medieval caliphate stretching across the Middle East, on the shores of the Mediterranean, bordering a NATO country! A NATO country! What could be more terrifying, more ignominious, more unacceptable?
Like the estimable Flying Rodent, I'm more than a little tired of the this-time-it-really-is-as-bad-as-we're-saying-it-is intervention argument. Ten years ago every politician told us we were facing a generational battle against Islamic extremism, a long war, a war we might even not realise was still going on or in fact had ended. Yesterday David Cameron said we will be fighting this "poisonous and extremist ideology" for the rest of his "political lifetime". His political lifetime could extend all the way up till next May, but put that happy thought to one side for a moment. Outside of the anti-jihadist monomaniacs, around the time of the Arab spring with bin Laden dead and al-Qaida central having been reduced to Ayman al-Zahawiri occasionally holding forth in his eternally pompous fashion, all those predictions seemed to have come to naught. Why then are all the old favourites being reheated like the fried chicken in the local kebab shop?
Cameron, naturally, has the answer. According to him what we're seeing isn't Sunni against Shia, but rather "a battle between Islam on the one hand and extremists who want to abuse Islam on the other". This is, as Kim Howells had it on the Turner prize entrants however many years ago, cold mechanical bullshit. The Islamic State of Iraq 5 years ago had been routed, thanks to the Awakening groups, i.e. Sunnis who had turned against ISI's brutality. Only our friend Nouri al-Maliki didn't keep his promises to the Awakening groups, with many complaining the payments they were due were either paid late or didn't arrive at all. Then came the uprising in Syria, which quickly descended into a sectarian proxy war. Some of the remnants of ISI formed the al-Nusra Front, and seeing this brought funding from the rich Wahhabi takfirists in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and so on, possibly including direct from the Saudi authorities, ISI proper joined the fray. Along with the proceeds from the oil fields they captured, ISI was suddenly swimming in wealth and gathering in a lot more fighters too. With the Sunni Arabs in the north of Iraq once again prepared to join up with or acquiesce to the jihadis, first Fallujah fell, then Mosul did.
When Cameron then says we must work with the likes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey you can't help but wonder if he isn't doing this deliberately. Those three nations have done more to help the Islamic State and its jihadi brethren than the rest of the world combined. Saudi policy towards Syria only altered at the beginning of this year, while it's difficult to know whether Qatar's has at all. Turkey's main role has been to keep the border open, helping refugees escape yes, but also to allow money and fighters to flow through unimpeded. Cameron even mentions the spectre of the Islamic State taking Aleppo, which prompts the obvious question of whether we might just have backed the wrong dog in this fight. Assad's a murderous, barbarous chemical weapon using dictator yes, but compared to the Islamic State he's a sweetheart.
What then is the plan now that the Yazidis have been helped off the mountain and the imminent threat of genocide seems to be receding? We're going to arm the Kurds, although it's not clear which Kurds, or whether by "arm" we mean provide them with equipment rather than ammunition for their ageing Soviet-era weapons, but are we expecting the peshmerga to liberate all of the territory taken by the Islamic State, albeit with ourselves or just the Americans providing air support, or just Mosul? If it's the former, are the Kurds then just going to hand all this Sunni dominated territory over to the Shia dominated Iraqi army once Baghdad has sorted itself out, or are they going to keep some of it in hope of a greater Kurdistan becoming inexorable at some point? This major favour to the west isn't going to come free, that's for sure, and if anyone with the exception of the Palestinians deserves a state, it's the Kurds. It certainly won't please either Turkey or the Iranians, though.
See, what starts out as a thoroughly decent operation to prevent abused and persecuted minorities from being slaughtered has the potential to quickly become the kind of conflict we did our best previously to prevent igniting. Trying to justify it all by resorting to the ever more exhausted national security reasoning is contemptible. When the best they can point to is hot-heads in east London flying an IS flag or ex-drug dealers joining a different type of war without the slightest evidence they have any intention of bringing the fight here they really have to change the record. Indeed, getting further involved would almost certainly increase rather than decrease the threat, exactly as MI5 warned prior to 2003. Yet here we are once again, with Michael Fallon warning our role is likely to take months rather than weeks. Irony, as ever, is smothering everything.
At times, everything seems to descend into parody. This, for instance, has to be a piss-take, an anonymous record producer making fun of a relatively new genre, a track made with a smile, the creator certain everyone will get the joke. It gets best new music on Pitchfork, Boomkat describes it as "exquisite ear candy ... visionary pop architecture" and even Resident Advisor approves. If this turn of events discombobulated the producer (whom last year put out this pleasing slice of house) then he seems to have just gone with it. After all, why not?
By the same token, David Cameron surely didn't think he'd get away with his article for the Sunday Telegraph. He (or whichever adviser/hanger-on wrote it) writes we can't let ourselves be imprisoned by the events of 10 years ago, and he has a point. Just because we've had a major hand in Iraq being in the mess it now is doesn't mean we shouldn't return and help Johnny Kurd push back the ethnic cleansers of the Islamic State. Besides, we're not going to put "boots on the ground", just as we didn't in Libya. If we so choose to bomb a few Islamic State positions, or more accurately described, vehicles, as they seem to be the main targets the Americans have chosen to obliterate thus far, we should know that doing so is all the more likely to prevent the Islamic State from becoming a threat here. Just think what might happen if we sat this one out. A positively medieval caliphate stretching across the Middle East, on the shores of the Mediterranean, bordering a NATO country! A NATO country! What could be more terrifying, more ignominious, more unacceptable?
Like the estimable Flying Rodent, I'm more than a little tired of the this-time-it-really-is-as-bad-as-we're-saying-it-is intervention argument. Ten years ago every politician told us we were facing a generational battle against Islamic extremism, a long war, a war we might even not realise was still going on or in fact had ended. Yesterday David Cameron said we will be fighting this "poisonous and extremist ideology" for the rest of his "political lifetime". His political lifetime could extend all the way up till next May, but put that happy thought to one side for a moment. Outside of the anti-jihadist monomaniacs, around the time of the Arab spring with bin Laden dead and al-Qaida central having been reduced to Ayman al-Zahawiri occasionally holding forth in his eternally pompous fashion, all those predictions seemed to have come to naught. Why then are all the old favourites being reheated like the fried chicken in the local kebab shop?
Cameron, naturally, has the answer. According to him what we're seeing isn't Sunni against Shia, but rather "a battle between Islam on the one hand and extremists who want to abuse Islam on the other". This is, as Kim Howells had it on the Turner prize entrants however many years ago, cold mechanical bullshit. The Islamic State of Iraq 5 years ago had been routed, thanks to the Awakening groups, i.e. Sunnis who had turned against ISI's brutality. Only our friend Nouri al-Maliki didn't keep his promises to the Awakening groups, with many complaining the payments they were due were either paid late or didn't arrive at all. Then came the uprising in Syria, which quickly descended into a sectarian proxy war. Some of the remnants of ISI formed the al-Nusra Front, and seeing this brought funding from the rich Wahhabi takfirists in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and so on, possibly including direct from the Saudi authorities, ISI proper joined the fray. Along with the proceeds from the oil fields they captured, ISI was suddenly swimming in wealth and gathering in a lot more fighters too. With the Sunni Arabs in the north of Iraq once again prepared to join up with or acquiesce to the jihadis, first Fallujah fell, then Mosul did.
When Cameron then says we must work with the likes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey you can't help but wonder if he isn't doing this deliberately. Those three nations have done more to help the Islamic State and its jihadi brethren than the rest of the world combined. Saudi policy towards Syria only altered at the beginning of this year, while it's difficult to know whether Qatar's has at all. Turkey's main role has been to keep the border open, helping refugees escape yes, but also to allow money and fighters to flow through unimpeded. Cameron even mentions the spectre of the Islamic State taking Aleppo, which prompts the obvious question of whether we might just have backed the wrong dog in this fight. Assad's a murderous, barbarous chemical weapon using dictator yes, but compared to the Islamic State he's a sweetheart.
What then is the plan now that the Yazidis have been helped off the mountain and the imminent threat of genocide seems to be receding? We're going to arm the Kurds, although it's not clear which Kurds, or whether by "arm" we mean provide them with equipment rather than ammunition for their ageing Soviet-era weapons, but are we expecting the peshmerga to liberate all of the territory taken by the Islamic State, albeit with ourselves or just the Americans providing air support, or just Mosul? If it's the former, are the Kurds then just going to hand all this Sunni dominated territory over to the Shia dominated Iraqi army once Baghdad has sorted itself out, or are they going to keep some of it in hope of a greater Kurdistan becoming inexorable at some point? This major favour to the west isn't going to come free, that's for sure, and if anyone with the exception of the Palestinians deserves a state, it's the Kurds. It certainly won't please either Turkey or the Iranians, though.
See, what starts out as a thoroughly decent operation to prevent abused and persecuted minorities from being slaughtered has the potential to quickly become the kind of conflict we did our best previously to prevent igniting. Trying to justify it all by resorting to the ever more exhausted national security reasoning is contemptible. When the best they can point to is hot-heads in east London flying an IS flag or ex-drug dealers joining a different type of war without the slightest evidence they have any intention of bringing the fight here they really have to change the record. Indeed, getting further involved would almost certainly increase rather than decrease the threat, exactly as MI5 warned prior to 2003. Yet here we are once again, with Michael Fallon warning our role is likely to take months rather than weeks. Irony, as ever, is smothering everything.
Labels: David Cameron, foreign policy, Iraq, Islamic State, jihadists, liberal interventionism, politics, Syria, US foreign policy
| Permalink
Post a Comment