Sunday, October 13, 2019

The things ignored

 12 hours ago
I teach on the history of the Iraq War, and for the past few years, not a single student has heard of Abu Ghraib before we discuss it in class (& watch ’s powerful documentary on it). This isn’t a student failure—it’s been erased from American cultural memory.
We have to constantly repeat and never assume we are saying it too much or too often, because it will always be the first time for someone.
152 replies2,998 retweets7,037 likes
 
 



So much is ignored and wiped away.  (And why writers -- Michael Tracey being a recent example -- shouldn't barrel through a column they're so proud of without providing the basics to events that took place over ten years ago.) 

The Iraq War never ended.  People pretend it has.  The US led an invasion of Iraq in 2003 and it destabilized everything allowing them to put one puppet after another in charge. 

We note that reality regularly.  And we get slammed for it.  The US has not done that ever, ever, swear so many.  These are people who don't pay attention.

They didn't pay attention when Bully Boy Bush installed Nouri al-Maliki in 2006, they didn't pay attention when the Iraqi people voted him out in 2010 but Barack Obama insisted he remain prime minister, they didn't pay attention when Barack finally had enough of Nouri and demanded he be kicked out in 2014 . . .

Which is a good time to note this series of Tweets.



  1.  3 hours ago
    Wow. Former US presidential envoy to ISIS Brett McGurk is implying I have blood on my hands for proposing a Syria plan. What a ludicrous thing to say. Brett is upset we called him out on all the failures, from ISIS’s rise from the ashes in ‘14 to the very mess unfolding today.
    20 replies71 retweets185 likes
     
     
First, I never ran US policy. McGurk did, and he was completely wrong about backing Maliki, the man who let ISIS back into Iraq. That was the single biggest mistake the US ever made after the invasion of Iraq. All the gains accomplished against al-Qaeda in Iraq were squandered.
4:26 PM - 13 Oct 2019
4 replies40 retweets109 likes
 
 
    1. New conversation
    1.  3 hours ago
      Interestingly, Obama's team, which included McGurk, accepted that this was a mistake. So they insisted on removing Maliki before providing support for Iraq against ISIS. But ironically put McGurk in charge of the very mess he contributed to. Yet, he kept making more mistakes.
      6 replies27 retweets80 likes
       
       
    2.  3 hours ago
      Today, McGurk is lecturing everyone on policy, and the misguided ways of thinking of a conflict. But that's the very tone he had in 2011, when he wrote this disastrous op-ed
      5 replies29 retweets68 likes
       
       
    3.  3 hours ago
      McGurk is using that same tone today to dismiss his critics. He and others were warned about this exact mess we're seeing today. We were right. Unfortunately. He was wrong. Repeatedly. But now he and his colleagues are trying to re-write history.
      5 replies24 retweets68 likes
       
       
    4.  3 hours ago
      While McGurk was envoy to the international coalition, the Pentagon backed a number of rebel factions now embedded with Turkey. He ran policy when some of the groups he now calls extremists and war criminals were receiving US weapons and money. Not me who has blood on his hands.
      7 replies42 retweets90 likes
       
       
    5.  3 hours ago
      Exactly, thanks Rasha. I proposed 'reasonable'/'minimalist' measures for the SDF & US presence: reform not radically change the SDF; to focus on governance rather than on combating Iran. So, considering that, it's really astonishing.
      I will also add it's very inaccurate. Hassan has been vocally supportive of the SDF for years. Exactly 2 years ago we shared a panel at the National Defense University and he explicitly recommended continued support to the SDF.
      3 replies11 retweets31 likes
       
       



Brett was always in the tank for Nouri.  We noted it here when Barack was trying to make Brett the US Ambassador to Iraq.  He was biased and he was supporting a known War Criminal.  He never should have been brought back -- he had been a Bully Boy Bush worker. Faux lefties and centrist Democrats wanted to act as though Brett's history wasn't known.  It was very well known and shame on them for supporting him.  Thank you to _______, who was a US senator at the time and explained to Barack why Brett was not going to be the US Ambassador to Iraq. 

Brett was a disaster and one of the better moves Donald Trump made was firing Brett. 

Brett was a disaster for Iraq.

Omar Sattar (AL-MONITOR) reports:
As demonstrations against government corruption worsen in Iraq, Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi is calling for a Cabinet reshuffle, and Kurdish leaders are trying to quell protesters' calls for his ouster, at least for now.
Negotiations continue between the Iraqi Kurdistan government in Erbil and federal officials in Baghdad. Erbil opposes the demands of demonstrators in Baghdad and the southern provinces to dismiss the central government. However, Erbil recognizes the legitimacy of the rest of the demands, in particular the need for political and economic reform.
The stated official position of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on the protests that have been taking place in Iraq since Oct. 1 is support for the "right to peaceful demonstration."
 
Others aren't so quick to give the government a pass.  Mohammed Rwanduzy (RUDAW) reports:

The Iraqi government is responsible for the deaths of protesters in a “dangerous escalation of violence” in recent demonstrations, even if rogue security elements were the ones pulling the trigger, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country’s highest Shiite religious authority, said in a statement on Friday after the government officially denied ordering the killings. 

One hundred and three protesters and security force members were killed and 4,035 people were injured in clashes during six days of nationwide protests over corruption, lack of government services, unemployment, and nepotism.

The government denied ordering security forces to shoot protesters, but, in another blow to the beleaguered administration of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Sistani said he would hold the government responsible.

“The government and its security forces are responsible for the abundance of blood spilled in the protests of the last days, whether be it from innocent civilians or security forces tasked to deal with it, and it [the government] cannot escape from assuming this huge responsibility,” Sistani said in a Friday public sermon read by his representative Sheikh Abdulmahdi al-Karbalai.

If security forces use “excessive force,” the government is still “responsible” because these security members are undisciplined, disobey orders, and are unqualified to deal with mass protests, asserted Sistani.



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