Today Juan Cole reports from a newspaper in Iraq that since Mohammed al-Allawi has become the new prime minister in Iraq, there has been a meeting in Baghdad between the Russian ambassador and the Iraqi milirary Chief of Staff, and the Iraqi president, Saleh, will be visiting Moscow shortly. A variety of issues and possible areas of cooperation apparently are being discussed, but the biggie apparently is that there is serious discussion of Russia replacing the US in providing air support for the Iraqi military for its ongoing campaign against the remnants of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.
It looks like the new PM is very much a part of the move in the Iraqi parliament to get US troops out of Iraq, something that those in Washington have been pretending is not for real. Juan Cole reports that key in this discussion is that when Trump killed Iranian general Soleimani at the Baghdad airport, he also killed Iraqi general al-Mohandis, a point I have posted on here before, and one that almost nobody talks about in the US (In the Dem ddebate just over ABC's David Muir tried to get the Dem candidates to say they would have killed Soleimani). But what has got lots of Iraqis upset about this is that it was a blatant violation of iraqi soverignty. Cole reports on Putin sending out a message promising to respect Iraqi sovereignty.
This may not come to pass, but for sure the only thing that Trump had to say about all this was to brag about killing Soleimani, no menton of the 67 American soldiers suffering brain injury due to the Iranian missilee attack in respoinse to this, and also the 170 people who died in an airplane accidentally shot down by the Iranians due to their being on high alert as a result of Trump's attack, much less a word about leaders and people in Iraq being upset over his also killing one of their generals in violation of their sovereignty.
Barkley Rosser
Crimea, Ukraine, Iraq, ..., what did Putin do to deserve such largesse?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/world/middleeast/iraq-iran-hezbollah-evidence.html
ReplyDeleteFebruary 6, 2020
Was U.S. Wrong About Attack That Nearly Started a War With Iran?
Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started a dangerous spiral of events.
By Alissa J. Rubin
Excellent short essay.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing this up. I saw this after posting and was going to add it. Certainly makes all of this even worse.
Apparently the sudden firing and removal of Joe Peek in mid-January from the White House National Security team may have been related to this.
JBR
"Certainly makes all of this even worse...."
ReplyDeleteThere is ample reason to believe the intelligence or interpretation of intelligence was wrong or at the least tentative. How then is at least tentative intelligence delivered to the president in a manner that calls forth such a military strike? This is indeed disturbing and I think not the first such incident since 2017.
"Andrew Peek" was the removed security officer and Barkley Rosser is right to be concerned about the matter.
ReplyDeleteThanks, again, A., yes, "Andrew Peek," not "Joe Peek." He was the person who had fairly recently replaced Tim (Tom?) Morrison, who resigned before testifying in the impeachment hearing, who in turn had replaced Fiona Hill, the latter clearly highly competent.
ReplyDeleteWhat is clear is that however it ps presented, Trump simply does not want to be told anything he does not like, and gets rid of those who insist ondoing so.
The frightening question becomes whether the president "arbitrarily" decided to kill a foreign leader on a diplomatic mission in another country and to risk or even provoke war? Frightening indeed. Barkley Rosser has raised an issue of critical importance.
ReplyDeleteMunich Security Conference:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.defensenews.com/smr/munich-security-conference/2020/02/10/munich-report-nato-funding-quarrels-mask-a-more-sinister-threat-to-the-alliance/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EBB%2002.11.20&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Early%20Bird%20Brief
“Today, the West as we know it is contested both from within and from without,” Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, wrote in the document, released on Monday ahead of weekend event."
"According to the authors, the threat inside comes in the form of “illiberalism” that prizes ethnic, cultural and religious unity over the rules-based order that has guided the West for decades."
"Such tendencies are on the rise in Europe, with far-right parties gaining steam or having secured some power already, as well as in the United States, where ideas of the alt-right movement have permeated the political discourse at the highest level."
Can China and Russia take advantage?
ilsm,
ReplyDeleteRussia has already done so.
I note that the count of American military service people suffering from brain injury due to the Iranian missile response to Trump's assassination of Soleimani has passed 100.
@rosserjb,
ReplyDeleteLooks like China is pulling one off in west pacific with Duterte (Philippine version of Erdogan?) pulling out of nearly 70 year old "defense pact".
Whenever (if?) M. Allawi gets a confidence vote "things" in Iraq will move along. Wonder what happens to the 36 F-16 Iraq "owns" up at Babad?