Again. Or, really, it never stopped burning and now there is gas on the fire. You already know that Iraq is under siege, this time by a group called ISIS, which seems to be a coalition of Sunni forces, Baathists, remnants of Al Queda in Iraq, Syrian and other foreign fighters. ISIS has been capturing territory with some ease, and the Kurds are using the chaos to grab back some land they’ve been claiming. Back home, this has been one more occasion for the GOP to rattle their sabers — calling for action in a country who has had plenty of US action. President Obama has said the usual “all options are on the table” except right now it doesn’t look like boots on the ground is an option.
The Guardian has had the best coverage (to me) of the newest episodes of violence in Iraq. And this one piece of reporting is the showstopper:
Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul, openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq’s second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting.
Right? Go read the rest — they’ve easily captured weapons, humvees and other equipment we supplied to the Iraqi army (on their way to Syria, certainly) and who knows what else. The Iraqi army that we spent so much money in training and equipping just melted away in the face of a force that the Iraqi army vastly outnumbered. I heard a report on The World this evening where the reporter noted that NO ONE she had talked too that day was calling for any US intervention or even help. Apparently they know what that looks like and don’t want more.
Which is fine by me, really. We never had a good reason to be there in the first place. And not it looks like the strongman that the US backed just continued to destabilize his country to the point here even his army isn’t interested. Oil markets are starting to get jittery which is no reason for American resources to intervene again over here. President Obama talked about there needing to be a political solution in Iraq which struck me as — how many years? — too late. The GOP calling for an intervention here is a genuine disgrace, though. We did Iraq the way they wanted for years and it was a mess when BushCo left office. The US getting out of Iraq was always about cutting losses and it is time to live with that.