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US president Obama
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Yitzhak Benhorin

Even peace laureate Obama can't escape Iraq war

Analysis: The president who kept his promise and withdrew US forces from Iraq is also the one who will be forced to return them to the battlefield and finish his term while in war.

The 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, invaded Iraq in 2003 and brought chaos and disaster to the country. In 2009, President Barack Obama was elected after promising the American people he would withdraw his country's forces from the Arab country.

 

 

And indeed, the last American troops pulled out of Iraq in 2011, and Obama has no intention of returning his people to Iraqi soil and dispatching tens of thousands of soldiers there for a ground operation. The Iraqis and Saudi army will take on that job themselves, as well as Jordan and even Turkey who all fear that the "cancer" of the Islamic State will spread to them.

 

Islamic State militants in Syria (Photo: Associated Press) (Photo: AP)
Islamic State militants in Syria (Photo: Associated Press)

 

But ironically, Obama is expected to spend the rest of his term in the White House dealing not with inequality between whites and blacks, coping with the problem of illegal immigrants or playing golf, but rather with the Iraqi problem.

 

According to the Pentagon's plans, the operation to eradicate the Islamic State may take up to three years. This means that the next president housed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will also be knee-deep in the Iraqi issue.

 

Several days ago, Obama came under great criticism after admitting the US does not have a strategy for confronting the Sunni extremist group. But on Wednesday, he will tell the American public and the congress how he plans to defeat ISIS.

 

Recent opinion polls indicate that the American public, unlike the past, does not want to avoid dealing with the Iraqi threat, and with the 13th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks days away – the most deadliest terrorist attack on American soil – the public is beginning to understand the Islamic State's deadly potential.

 

The Americans are terrified by the possibility that American passport holders, who are fighting in Iraq and Syria and are dreaming of establishing an Islamic alternative, are just one plane ticket away from the US and from exporting attacks onto its soil.

 

The issue at hand is no longer a long-term concern about the hegemony of nuclear Iran, but an immediate worry regarding barbaric militants that have control of territories, assets and a large amount of money.

 

These fighters dream of eliminating the monarchical regimes in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and pose a threat to Turkey and other countries.

 

Israeli officials were not happy with Obama's handling of the Islamic State issue. Even the legendary Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who knows a thing or two about the Middle East, believes, in contrast to Obama, that Iran remains to be a bigger problem than ISIS.

 

In an interview with NPR radio, Kissinger explained that "the borders of the settlement of 1919-’20 are essentially collapsing. That gives Iran a very powerful level from a strategic point of view. I consider Iran a bigger problem than ISIS.

 

"ISIS is a group of adventurers with a very aggressive ideology. But they have to conquer more and more territory before they can became a strategic, permanent reality," he said, adding that "I think a conflict with ISIS — important as it is — is more manageable than a confrontation with Iran."

 

ISIS supporters in Raqaa, Syria (Photo: Reuters) (Photo: Reuters)
ISIS supporters in Raqaa, Syria (Photo: Reuters)

 

But for the monarchical regimes in the Middle East, ISIS is the immediate threat. It is for this reason that Obama is sending his Secretary of State John Kerry to the Middle East to talk with the heads of the Arab League, the Saudis and other Gulf countries, in order to recruit the Arab armies to combat the Islamic State on the ground in Iraq and participate in funding the fight.

 

" I think, for the, perhaps the first time, you have absolute clarity that the problem for Sunni states in the region, many of whom are our allies, is not simply Iran. It's not simply a Sunni-Shia issue," the US president said in an interview with NBC.

 

"I think that it is absolutely true that we're going to need Sunni states to step up, not just Saudi Arabia, our partners like Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey. They need to be involved. This is their neighborhood. The dangers that are posed are-- are more directed at them right now than they are us," he added.

 

Questionable credibility

The US under the Obama administration has lost a great deal of its credibility with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab counties.

 

During his next visit in the area, Secretary of State Kerry has to convince the Arabs that the US, the country that generated the problem, will make an effort towards the solution, and will do so with air strikes, intelligence, the provision of military equipment and training, and working towards economically isolating the threatening terrorist entity.

 

But as Obama told NBC, "We're not looking at sending 100,000 American troops. We are going to be, as part of an international coalition, carrying out air strikes in support of work on the ground by Iraqi troops, Kurdish troops.

 

"We are going to be helping to put together a plan for them, so that they can start retaking territory that ISIL had taken over," the US president said. This will most likely be the content of Obama's promise in his address to the American nation on Wednesday.

 

Kurdish troops. "We are going to be helping to put together a plan for them." (Photo: Reuters) (Photo: Reuters)
Kurdish troops. "We are going to be helping to put together a plan for them." (Photo: Reuters)

 

Those who are uncertain about our partnership with the US can observe the 150 air strikes carried out by American planes in the past month to rescue Iraq from the clutches of the Islamic State.

 

These air attacks are efficient for removing the Islamic State, but aren't enough without the presence of Kurdish forces on the ground. And although the US is bombing from the air, the fight against the extremist group will be resolved on the ground.

 

After years of Shi'ite Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq and Alawite Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Sunni public feels deprived, and is pushed into the arms of the Islamic State. Obama told NBS that as part of the plan, the US has to "attract back Sunni tribes that may have felt that they had no connection to a Baghdad government that was ignoring their grievances."

 

Washington refused to bomb Iraq as long as al-Maliki was prime minster, and immediately after his resignation, the Sunni tribes joined the fight against the Islamic State militants. 

 

The US denies cooperation with Iran in Iraq and with the Assad regime in Syria, but in reality, Assad is not threatening to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States, and the Islamic State is a common enemy to both Syria and the US.

 

Obama promises joint action in the political, military and economical arenas, which is expected to take years.

 

"We are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum of (ISIS), we are going to systematically degrade their capabilities," he told NBC. "We're going to shrink the territory that they control and ultimately, we're going to defeat them," said Obama – the president who received a Nobel Peace Prize at the beginning of his presidential term and will end it, ironically enough, in war.

 


פרסום ראשון: 09.09.14, 10:55
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