The Syrian War, the Iraq War and ISIS, Part I
by Dwight Jeffress, Updated Jul 1, 2019
This was originally going to be a Facebook post, but then I reevaluated and figured it best to make this a blog post, simply because of its length.
The following post I have written only skims the surface of a much deeper reality. The future possibilities of the Middle East will have global repercussions. We cannot ignore this region, and if we as a nation decide to involve ourselves in it, we must be very careful in how we handle our enemies as well as our allies.
WARNING: Graphic content in the video link below.
Some more on the recent conflict that just has settled for now in northwestern Iraq...
There are a lot of players in this story... perhaps some things we are not familiar with in the U.S.
Three main groups... the Sunni, the Shia, and the Kurds, plus there are tribal loyalties embedded within that context. The Sunni and Shia are different groups... or dare I say denominations within Islam. Iraq, under Saddam Hussien and his Baath party was ruled for years by the minority Sunni, with the majority Shia having virtually no part to play in that government.
Engaging in the "regime change" operations of the Gulf Wars upset the status quo of what was the Baathist Sunni dictatorship that excelled in the cruel and torturous treatment of their subject people.
This is a very complex story, with no easy answer. There is no simple black and white here... there is a lot of grey. in the meantime, the human cost is catastrophic. ISIS had to be destroyed, but the actors in that drama to defeat them are various shades of grey, even the foreign actors who support the various groups in what had culminated in the Syrian Civil War and Iraq's war against ISIS.
In dealing with ISIS (ISIL) with the Russians operating in the interests of Syria and the United States supporting the Iraqi government... this is a very tenuous situation that could boil over... but as in a previous video I posted the area should not be ignored and "let them all kill each other" as a specialist on the region commented, if we do that, the one who will come out on top of the conflict could be the cruelest, the most ruthless and the most dangerous.
What should have been understood, and I had spoken about this during the first and second Gulf Wars that getting involved in that region was not a short campaign. It would be a long time of being involved in that region. Should we have kept troops over there for an even more extended amount of time?... not sure about that... as mistakes were made in the initial regime change that occurred. The Shia leadership after the fall of Hussein resulted in retribution and revenge on the Sunni minority and then prompted, perhaps indirectly, the rise of ISIS.
We are not done here... Maybe we shouldn't have intervened in the first place, but hindsight is 20/20... easy to say also when we as Americans at the time were quite insulated and even more ignorant of the human rights violations occurring in that region, as well as the tenuous balance that stabilized the region by not so good actors.
There are really no easy answers to the situation, but as a nation and as citizens of the world, I do believe we need to tread lightly when dealing with the Middle East. Many lessons to be learned here.
Much more I could say, but I have said enough for now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbsesrAMjTw
The previous video I posted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EUachAFhEA
This was originally going to be a Facebook post, but then I reevaluated and figured it best to make this a blog post, simply because of its length.
The following post I have written only skims the surface of a much deeper reality. The future possibilities of the Middle East will have global repercussions. We cannot ignore this region, and if we as a nation decide to involve ourselves in it, we must be very careful in how we handle our enemies as well as our allies.
WARNING: Graphic content in the video link below.
Some more on the recent conflict that just has settled for now in northwestern Iraq...
There are a lot of players in this story... perhaps some things we are not familiar with in the U.S.
Three main groups... the Sunni, the Shia, and the Kurds, plus there are tribal loyalties embedded within that context. The Sunni and Shia are different groups... or dare I say denominations within Islam. Iraq, under Saddam Hussien and his Baath party was ruled for years by the minority Sunni, with the majority Shia having virtually no part to play in that government.
Engaging in the "regime change" operations of the Gulf Wars upset the status quo of what was the Baathist Sunni dictatorship that excelled in the cruel and torturous treatment of their subject people.
This is a very complex story, with no easy answer. There is no simple black and white here... there is a lot of grey. in the meantime, the human cost is catastrophic. ISIS had to be destroyed, but the actors in that drama to defeat them are various shades of grey, even the foreign actors who support the various groups in what had culminated in the Syrian Civil War and Iraq's war against ISIS.
In dealing with ISIS (ISIL) with the Russians operating in the interests of Syria and the United States supporting the Iraqi government... this is a very tenuous situation that could boil over... but as in a previous video I posted the area should not be ignored and "let them all kill each other" as a specialist on the region commented, if we do that, the one who will come out on top of the conflict could be the cruelest, the most ruthless and the most dangerous.
What should have been understood, and I had spoken about this during the first and second Gulf Wars that getting involved in that region was not a short campaign. It would be a long time of being involved in that region. Should we have kept troops over there for an even more extended amount of time?... not sure about that... as mistakes were made in the initial regime change that occurred. The Shia leadership after the fall of Hussein resulted in retribution and revenge on the Sunni minority and then prompted, perhaps indirectly, the rise of ISIS.
We are not done here... Maybe we shouldn't have intervened in the first place, but hindsight is 20/20... easy to say also when we as Americans at the time were quite insulated and even more ignorant of the human rights violations occurring in that region, as well as the tenuous balance that stabilized the region by not so good actors.
There are really no easy answers to the situation, but as a nation and as citizens of the world, I do believe we need to tread lightly when dealing with the Middle East. Many lessons to be learned here.
Much more I could say, but I have said enough for now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbsesrAMjTw
The previous video I posted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EUachAFhEA
Comments
Post a Comment