The incoming President of the United States will be confronted with a Middle East in ever escalating conflict and tragic bloodshed, a violent conundrum that has flummoxed the Obama/Hillary/Keary gang of fools. Or are they fools? Depending on their perspective, they have each been very well funded (bought and paid for) by the Sunni Saudis and their partners, and Iran (Obama’s chief string puller, Valerie Jarrett is Shia Iranian while Hillary relies on her Sunni sidekick, Huma Abedin)
To be fair, the Bush administration didn’t manage this Iraqi deal well either. The Obama gang has just made it far, far worse. Were they inept as some claim, or did this occur by design?
I opposed the Iraqi invasion from the beginning. In 2003, I sent letters to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and others. I expressed my opposition to the invasion; and then offered my well-informed guidance regarding a possible result of the invasion and removing Sunni Saddam Hussein from office and replacing him with a Shia government, and offered a possible solution to a crisis that I saw coming. If the letters got through to anyone, they were ignored.
Saddam was removed and eventually hung, and anarchy and chaos has been the result of the Bush administration’s woeful, perhaps willful ignorance and shortsightedness.
I wrote (in 2007) and published in 2009 an essay/book titled DI DI DAW DAW DI DI. The CIA ‘redacted’ (censored) portions of this essay, but text is 99% as I drafted it. It has been updated and republished with a new name, EXPERIENCING ISLAM. The essay covers a few topics, which include Iraq and Afghanistan.
I believe that the Bush administration was goaded into the attack on Iraq by the Saudis because of their fear of an eventual Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia by Iraq. Understand that the Saudis exert untoward control over the Bush family finances and fortune because of their very long and deeply intertwined business ties with the Saudis, the Bushes had little choice even if they had the good sense to want to do otherwise. Note that just six weeks after 9/11, the Bush banker/businessman, Neil Bush, was in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, having lunch and chumming it up with the bin Laden family. Neat, eh?
As the Bush administration was winding down its involvement after the “victory” (Mission Accomplished), there was one major item that had not yet been worked out regarding maintaining an American military presence in Iraq, a Status-of-Forces Agreement (SOFA) which is worked out in every country where American troops are stationed. It protects American troops from bogus legal actions and in other ways in the ‘host’ country.
The unfinished SOFA was handed over to the Obama administration to complete, and the Obama administration failed to get this done.
Under the Obama administration, Saddam’s former Republican Guard evolved into Al Qaeda in Iraq, later morphing into ISIS which now, like a hydra headed monster has tentacles reaching out all over the world.
BACKGROUND :
I wrote to Bush and his team trying to teach them that Iraq, Syria, and a number of countries were created following the fall of the vast Ottoman empire after WWI, 100 years ago when the Ottoman Empire was dismantled (Balfour Declaration). Several countries were created by the British and the French by simply drawing lines on maps (Trans-Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, etc.) with little to zero consideration of the diversity of the tribes living in those places. Or, perhaps it was a perverse way of following the rules of dividing and conquering, dividing some tribes, and then jamming other tribes or parts of tribes together to create never ending conflict between them.
The Kurdish tribe was sliced and diced into three parts left in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq and have been punished and abused as despised minorities ever since. The Armenians (and other Christians) remaining in Turkey were subjected to a horrible genocide by the Turks with millions murdered.
Iraq was created with a Kurdish minority up north, a Shia minority in the south, with Sunni Arabs in the middle ruling over everyone. [Under Saddam’s rule, the various Christian groups were permitted to live as long as they remained neutral and stayed out of politics.] Sunnis have harshly ruled over and abused the Shia in that area for six hundred years. The Shia/Sunni hatred runs deep. The Shia thirst for revenge was unleashed when Bush foolishly put the whole country under the rule of Shia Moslems.
The result is a horrible civil war that is going nowhere.
As I write, the Shia Iraqi government is mounting a major offensive against the largely Sunni city of Mosul in northern Iraq. [Over the intervening years, the many hundreds of thousands of Christians in and around Mosul have been eradicated (ethnically cleansed).] tThe impending cleansing Mosul of 750,000 Sunnis, the eradication of hated Sunnis by Shia will do nothing to resolve the issues. More revenge will take place, perhaps unendingly.
OPTIONS FOR THE NEW PRESIDENT :
After are sworn in, the POTUS (I hope it is Trump) must put together a team (I would be proud to serve) to consider options. Organize a regional conference of directly affected and/or involved parties (The Kurds, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Iran, Israel, Russia, and yes, ISIS). The UN and NATO would necessarily need to be omitted from these deliberations because they would bring a preponderance of their conflicting attitudes and biases to the table and that would torpedo anything anyone would want to accomplish.
By omitting the UN and NATO, the POTUS would establish American power in a leadership role that would put the world on notice that there is a new direction that could establish a more durable and lasting peace in the area, etc. As organizers and leaders of this conclave, we would hold the power of the veto.
James E. Horn is a retired American Diplomat
He can be reached at james@portervillepost.com
