...is it your opinion that US operations in Iraq today are not authorized by the Government of Iraq? Or is it your argument that had we maintained (as the Iraqi's wanted) a 20,000 strong force in Iraq years ago, that that would have not been authorized by the GoI?
I'm not sure what you mean by "at the behest". We get blessing for ops, and then we decide which actual ops we want to undertake. We don't take orders from the Iraqi Govt, they simply authorize us to operate.
If by "at the behest" you mean "because they want us there", well, duh. The situation is the same for South Korea and Japan.
We wouldn't of been allowed by the GoI to get involved in the places we needed to be. Sure, once ISIS came across the border, then yes, the US might of been able to be involved. (On a sidenote: do you really want our boys out there on the front lines when the iraqi army was in the middle of desertion? To me, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.) But when it came to the treatment of the Sunnis, which is really the problem here, we wouldn't of been able to get involve.
:lol: yeah. Because when I look at Maliki today I think to myself "man, there is a guy who holds all the cards".
You are incorrect. We have the cards because we can decide when and when not to employ our assets in the salvation of the crumbling Iraqi state.
The "that" point I was referring to wasn't now, but back when a SOF would of been signed. But let's say that we do all that you and other propose to assist the Iraqi government. There's nothing to stop them from going back to status quo after the fighting has ceased. You can say we wouldn't allow it, but just how are we going to stop them?
This is false, demonstrated little better than the fact that when this claim was put to the test, it failed.
It's different when you are effectively Military governors, which is what we were during the Awakening.
:lol:
The Sunni Tribes weren't joining with ISIS until we left and Maliki was left to run nuts. The Sunni Tribes helped kick ISIS' a-- when we were there.
What is ISIS or ISIL hasn't been around but for a couple of years, so the Sunnis didn't help us kick their ass. Now it's probably true that fighters that were purt of the insurgency have since joined in ISIS, still there, different groups and more important, different aims.
No we do not. Not sure how that invalidates the fact that we have been successful in the past at exporting ideological assumptions and guiding the formation of acceptable governance on foreign soil.
Because in this, the religious leaders aren't backing us up. With Japan, we had the advantage of an emperor who was tired of warfare and wanted peace for his people. The people of the middle east, and their religious leaders, are clearly not ready to stop the fighting. The other difference is that we only had to deal with one religion, not different sects, which even more complicates things.
True and they made a deal with the devil after we abandoned them.
If by deal, you mean accept that Maliki was to be the leader of the GoI, what other choice did they have?
Indeed. And once threat had been demonstrated, we were willing to destroy it. As we are not today.
As of yet though, ISIS hasn't attacked the US.
20,000 troops is not a token. The 5,000 that Obama wanted to leave likely would have been, which is why that demand destroyed the talks.
That is false, although continuing to heavily influence Iraq would have been necessary. Hells bells, ISIL was just about toast when we left. All we would have had to do would have been to maintain hard-won gains (which we instead pissed away).
Here's the thing; we may of had them beaten in Iraqi, but originally this threat didn't come from within Iraq. We've been pretty hesitant to become militarily involved in the Syrian conflict, and in the end have probably indirectly aided ISIS anyways, so it's doubtful we would of launched military operations into Syria to go after them. You basically have the same situation like in Afghanistan, where they can always run across the border to regroup before coming back. And with a Sunni population that was willing to support them, we then would of been caught in the crossfire of another civil war. At the very least, we'd find ourselves in the position of having the back Maliki and the actions he was doing.
As far as annexing Iraq concerns, I think you underestimate just how "heavily" we would need to influence Iraq. For Iraq to finally stabilize, their infrastructure needs to be rebuilt and Iraq isn't up to that task:
* According to a March 2011 report by the UN's Inter-Agency Information and Analysis Unit, one in five Iraqi households use an unsafe source of drinking water, and another 16 per cent report daily supply problems. The situation is even worse in rural areas, where only 43 per cent have access to safe drinking water, and water available for agriculture is usually scarce and of very poor quality. These facts have led more Iraqis than ever to leave rural communities in search of water and work in the cities, further compounding already existing problems there. The UN report states: "Quality of water used for drinking and agriculture is poor, violating Iraq National Standards and WHO guidelines. Leaking sewage pipes and septic tanks contaminate the drinking water network with wastewater. Eighty per cent of households do not treat water before drinking. Furthermore, just 18 per cent of wastewater is treated, with the rest released directly into waterways."
* Street side electricity generators are now a common sight around Iraq's capital city, where the average home receives between four and eight hours of electricity each day. Some areas, such as Sadr City, receive an average of less than five hours a day, with some portions of the area receiving a mere hour to two a day - and sometimes none at all. Many people opt to simply pay private vendors for electricity from the generators, whose owners run lines to their respective clients. Some areas of Baghdad continue to receive one to five hours of electricity a day.
* According to the UNDP, Iraq has a poverty rate of 23 per cent, which means roughly six million Iraqis are plagued by poverty and hunger, despite the recent increase in Iraq's oil exports. Iraq's Ministry of Planning has also announced that the country needed some $6.8bn to reduce the level of poverty in the country.
As long as the above conditions remain, you're going to have unrest throughout the region. And the level of corruption within the Iraqi government is so high, it's doubtful that any meaningful progress will ever happened. If the US was administrating the country, we would be able to ensure that everyone has a seat at the table, but also be able to start to take care of some of these issues. Of course, at this point security is the highest concern, and as we have seen, the Iraqi Army definitely isn't capable of handling that..