With the troubling news coming out of Iraq these past few days I can only think what a waste the War was. We lost over 4500 service men and women and hundreds of billions of dollars, not to mention the fact that we were led into the conflict under false pretenses regarding WMDs. We were then sold a moralistic argument that we removed of a brutal dictator from power that Donald Rumsfeld, former Sec. of Defense, met and shook hands with in the 1980′s during the Iraq/Iran War.
Now the jihadi, Sunni-led ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) is spilling out of Syria’s bloody civil war and invading Iraq at an alarming speed, taking city after city. They are now heading to Baghdad to settle old scores with Prime Minister Nurem Maliki, a Shiite, who has excluded Sunni’s from the government. Even former Baath Party members (the ruling Party of the Hussein Sunni era) are joining with ISIS in the goal of establishing a Islamic caliphate practicing Sharia law. Maliki now wants help from the U.S. in the form of airstrikes with jet fighters and drones, which according to sources reporting to the NYT seems very unlikely.
The borders of Iraq were set up by colonialists in the 19th century with no bearing or regard for lumping together people of different tribes, and now the current borders are being threatened by sectarian violence. It seems to me, more now then ever, that the Iraq War was a tragic waste.
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