Frontline aired a documentary on the state of Iraq from the war to today. Two things
struck out at me. One was during the
Bush administration.
After Saddam Hussein was toppled, the Sunnis were disenfranchised. They rebelled by participating in an
insurgency. President Bush’s advisors recognized
the problem and addressed it. Here is an
excerpt from Frontline:
The U.S. also needed a new approach on the ground. This time, it
was a last-ditch effort to salvage the American incursion in Iraq.
Bush brought in Gen. David Petraeus to
lead what became known as the surge — an additional 30,000 U.S. troops who
moved off the large, fortified bases and into the neighborhoods.
U.S. forces sustained their heaviest
losses during this period. But in August, they caught a break: Muqtada al-Sadr,
the head of a powerful Shia militia, called for a ceasefire and stopped
attacking coalition forces. The move created a lull in the violence that
allowed U.S. forces to focus on the Sunni insurgency
At the same time, Petraeus, a counterinsurgency expert, also
reached out to Sunni tribes who had backed the insurgency, but had also begun
to turn against Al Qaeda fighters in their community. The general’s goal:
convince them to stop attacking American troops and focus only on battling Al
Qaeda. The means: cash.
The U.S. would ultimately pay out about
$400 million to the 103,000 Sunnis who became known as the “Sons of Iraq,” or
the “Awakening.” But Maliki, a Shia, was wary of engaging with the Sunni
tribes. Petraeus persuaded the prime minister to support the effort.
Prime Minister Malaki and his Shia cohorts engaged
the Sunni faction by allowing them to participate in the general
government. They once again held
positions in the military. That all
stopped after Bush left office. Once the
Messiah was sworn in, all hell breaks loose.
Prime Minister Malaki begins a purge. And once again, we are back to chaos. Now, you would think Barack Obama would have
learned from the past mistakes Bush made.
Wrong. He ignores the problem.
Frontline writes:
The day after the American troops left, Maliki issued an arrest
warrant for the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, forcing him to flee the
country. Maliki would go on to push other prominent Sunnis from political
office and the military, and ultimately stopped payments to the Sons of Iraq.
The message was clear: there would be no
role for Sunnis in Maliki’s Shia regime. For many, their only recourse would be
to join the fight against it.
Instead of Al Qaeda, the Sunnis allowed ISIS to come
in and once again repeat history. This
could have been prevented had Obama and his advisors learned from past mistakes
and advised Malaki not to disenfranchise the Sunnis.
Obama was waging his own terror campaign in
the United States. He was busy
disenfranchising millions of Americans from their health care plans.
