Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is making a plea to the U.S.
Iraq is what Maliki describes as a “vibrant democracy.” He says he’s fighting terrorism. Al Qaeda terrorists are in Iraq killing the Iraqi people, he explains.
“It has been almost two years since American troops withdrew from Iraq,” Maliki wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed. “And despite the terrorist threats we face, we are not asking for American boots on the ground. Rather, we urgently want to equip our own forces with the weapons they need to fight terrorism, including helicopters and other military aircraft so that we can secure our borders and protect our people.”
If arming a Middle Eastern country with a solid history of sectarian violence sounds familiar and like a bad idea, it’s because the U.S. has done it before.
In Afghanistan in the ’80s, the U.S. armed the Mujahedeen guerrilla warriors to aid their fight against the invading Soviets. And when the Americans invaded the country a decade later, they were met with their own weapons.
Maliki’s op-ed starts off by mentioning terrorism and then goes into the civil war in Syria.
“The war in Syria has become a magnet that attracts sectarian extremists and terrorists from various parts of the world and gathers them in our neighbourhood,” he write, “with many slipping across our all-too-porous borders. We do not want Syria or Iraq to become bases for Al Qaeda operations, and neither does the United States.”
In March, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry went to Iraq and discussed with Maliki the daily flights (presumed to be arms) from Iran, across Iraq, into Syria.
Deliveries
These daily deliveries are a lifeline to Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has gassed thousands of people and then blamed it on rebels.
According to reports, Maliki refuses to stop the flights to Syria.
When Maliki says “resolving the conflict in Syria,” that warrants a follow-up question: Whose side are you on? His government has history of helping Iran evade sanctions.
The U.S. dropped a trillion dollars to replace dictator Saddam Hussein with Maliki, a man who spent the ’80s in exile in Syria and then in Iran under the protection of the infamous Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.
Often in cognitive dissonance, after the failure of prediction – such as that the U.S. would be greeted by Iraqis as liberators – there is a doubling-down phenomenon as described by psychologist Leon Festinger. Which is to say that when the evidence doesn’t match up with our hopes, we often just hope harder.
The U.S. hoped to at least gain a friend in the Middle East by going into Iraq. It’s not panning out.
It appears Maliki is at the very least complicit in arming Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in a civil war that has claimed 115,000 lives.
This September, 52 Iranian dissidents were slaughtered at Camp Ashraf. It was carried out by Iraqi forces – armed with American weapons.
There are still seven Iranian exile hostages the European Parliament has demanded be released, going so far as to threaten ending trade with Iraq.
Supplying more weapons to Iraq could only make things worse.
This is an edited version of an editorial by Tina Dupuy, syndicated columnist.
