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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA Third Iraq War?
The United States now faces the possibility of its third intervention in Iraq. On paper, the two earlier wars quickly achieved their military goals. In 1991, a muscular alliance of thirty-four nations, led by the United States, forced Iraq to withdraw from the tiny city-state of Kuwait in a mere six weeks. In 2003, President Saddam Hussein, after twenty-four years in power, fled Baghdad just three weeks after a token coalition of the willing invaded. Yet both wars were ultimately political failures, and the new challenge in Iraq may prove to be even deadlier, with sweeping regional repercussions. Given its deepening sectarian and ethnic divisionsand the absence of a cohesive or effective militarythe modern Iraqi state may not hold. Neighboring Syria is already shattered, and the Middle East mapdefined by European powers a century agomay be redrawn, either de facto or formally. Globally, the jihadist threat has never been greater.
The Obama Administration is debating options to salvage Iraq. In the first Iraq warthe Gulf Warthe George H. W. Bush Administration deployed more than half a million troops; allies provided another two hundred thousand. Together, they easily overwhelmed the Iraqi military. Oil-rich Gulf states, along with Japan and Germany, picked up much of the tabroughly sixty billion dollars.
At the height of the second Iraq war, the George W. Bush Administration sent more than a hundred and seventy thousand troops; a few other nations provided an additional eleven thousand. Washington paid its own billsestimated at $1.7 trillion, plus almost five hundred billion dollars in benefits due to war veterans.
Neither approach would be feasible for a third Iraq war. Washington doesnt have the same enthusiasm, or the will. The military may be capable, but it is fatigued. As the United States emerges from the Great Recession, its resources are limited; abundant foreign funding is unlikely. Public opinion is wary. The scope of the mission could expand out of control. Iraq might not be rescuable without the U.S. dealing with Syria, since the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has already erased part of the border between the two countries. If ISIS zealots were defeated in Iraq, they could simply retreat to their Syrian bases and come back another day. In addition, Iraqs regional conflict has become deeply sectarian. The threat to the United States is barbaric jihadism, as both an ideology and a tactic, but for many in Iraq, and in neighboring countries, the dispute is quickly evolving into a fratricidal rivalry between Shiites and Sunnis. This time around, American intervention could get entangled with a fourteen-century-old schism between Islamic sects.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2014/06/a-third-iraq-war.html?utm_source=www&utm_medium=tw&utm_campaign=20140618
liberal N proud
(60,298 posts)You can't win fighting in someone else's religious war.
dballance
(5,756 posts)Too bad the Cheneys and their ilk still have blood lust for war profits.
I'm just not sure that the American people are ready to go along with another war. The outcry to not intervene in Syria was a good example. After decades of fruitless wars the American people are quite fatigued and even FOX is calling out Dick Cheney for being wrong about Iraq back in 2003 now.