The
latest iteration of the Iraq War is
already starting to escalate. The day
after Christmas, U.S. forces and its
allies hit the Islamic State of Iraq and
the Levant (ISIL) with
31 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.
Three thousand U.S. military advisers
are now authorized to accompany Iraqi
troops into combat, while American
helicopter pilots fly combat missions
over Iraq. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff
Martin Dempsey and Secretary of
State John Kerry want to keep open the
option of
officially dispatching combat
troops.
In
northern Iraq, many Sunni and some Shia
political leaders told me they remain
suspicious about renewed American
involvement. This came as no surprise.
The United States, after all, invaded
Iraq only a little more than a decade
ago on the false pretense of eliminating
weapons of mass destruction. Its new
stated aims seem to many to be almost as
implausible.
In August a U.S.
diplomat rattled off to me the three
original justifications for the new war:
stopping the immediate slaughter of
minorities fleeing attacks by ISIL,
protecting American military personnel
in the northern city of Erbil and
keeping ISIL from overrunning the
Kurdish region.
None of those
rationales hold up under scrutiny.
-- Reese Erlich, "The New Iraq War is Doomed" (Information Clearing House).