The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places. Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. . . . [F]rom our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Andrew Bacevich


Friday, June 17, 2016

Update for Friday, June 17, 2016


The battle for Fallujah is certainly not over, but government forces have seized the city hall and IS forces have fled from some areas freeing civilians to leave. However, refugee camps cannot cope with the influx.




A 69-year-old Fallujah resident, who escaped al-Joulan quarter said they noticed militants evacuating early in the morning, taking vehicles loaded with food and fuel. “The news started spreading quickly and we prepared to leave from as early as 5am,” he added. “The Iraqi army was some 3 kilometres away from my home. We were thousands leaving the city…when we reached the armed forces we were given food and water but the army trucks transporting families to the camps were full.”

Marc Lynch at the Carnegie Endowment discusses the sectarian nature of the conflict in Iraq.

A narrative of Sunni victimization at the hands of Shias and Iran has dominated much of the Arab media and social media. Al-Jazeera has taken the lead in crafting this highly sectarian narrative about the Fallujah operation as an Iranian and Shia-militia campaign to exterminate Sunnis. Kasim has inflamed his significant public with a barrage of these incendiary Twitter polls. Those polls, for all their lack of scientific validity, tell a frightening story: 72 percent of respondents said they supported the Islamic State over the Shia militias in the battle of Fallujah; 84 percent said that the Iranian occupation posed a greater threat than the Islamic State; and 86 percent said the goal of the Fallujah campaign was to consolidate Iranian occupation of Iraq rather than to fight terrorism.
The UN is concerned about a resurgence of polio among the Fallujah population, which has had no vaccination program since the IS takeover in 2014. Approximately 40,000 people have already fled Fallujah and there are believed to be about the same number left. At this point, there appear to be no resources to meet their needs.

Posted by Cervantes at 10:18 AM

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)