Juan Cole, Univ of Michigan mideast history professor has been writing about the wars in the middle east since 9/11. Rather than being a specialist that was only known in a small circle, he has become an international go to commentator. His blog is the first thing I read in the morning.
Some may recall how he was hounded by Bush administration and his chair position at Yale was undermined with the help of the Israel lobby.
During the pitched battles of the Iraq war the joke was that the CIA could just use his blog for information. Juan read the newspapers in the original each night when the morning papers came out at about 10 PM EST and then publish in the morning typically before 6 AM EST.
A couple of years ago he wrote a book about Napoleon's adventure of invading Egypt which was a cake walk, then occupation, then a guerrilla war struck back and he lost his army and almost his life.
History repeats itself in our disastrous war in Iraq and Afghanistan (recall that it is called the death of empires for a good reason)
Here is an update of the latest fighting and a short history lesson of the powers dividing up Middle East after WW I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
The Fall of Mosul and the False Promises of Modern History
What could we have done at home and in the world with the at least $3 trillion dollar war for oil?
The fall of Mosul to the radical, extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a set of historical indictments. Mosul is Iraq’s second largest city, population roughly 2 million (think Houston) until today, when much of the population was fleeing. While this would-be al-Qaeda affiliate took part of Falluja and Ramadi last winter, those are smaller, less consequential places and in Falluja tribal elders persuaded the prime minister not to commit the national army to reducing the city.
It is an indictment of the George W. Bush administration, which falsely said it was going into Iraq because of a connection between al-Qaeda and Baghdad. There was none. Ironically, by invading, occupying, weakening and looting Iraq, Bush and Cheney brought al-Qaeda into the country and so weakened it as to allow it actually to take and hold territory in our own time. They put nothing in place of the system they tore down. They destroyed the socialist economy without succeeding in building private firms or commerce. They put in place an electoral system that emphasizes religious and ethnic divisions. They helped provoke a civil war in 2006-2007, and took credit for its subsiding in 2007-2008, attributing it to a troop escalation of 30,000 men (not very plausible). In fact, the Shiite militias won the civil war on the ground, turning Baghdad into a largely Shiite city and expelling many Sunnis to places like Mosul. There are resentments.
And yesterday we have another reminder that we have a
Tomgram: Engelhardt, A Record of Unparalleled Failure
from
Don’t Walk Away from War
It’s Not the American Way
when this article was reprinted on commondreams.org it was given the title
Post-9/11 US Foreign Policy: A Record of Unparalleled Failure
No matter how you define American-style war or its goals, it doesn’t work. Ever.
The link to this article was already posted here on DK but the TomDispatch posts NEVER make it to the REC list. Thus I will reprint the first few paragraphs.
The United States has been at war -- major boots-on-the-ground conflicts and minor interventions, firefights, air strikes, drone assassination campaigns, occupations, special ops raids, proxy conflicts, and covert actions -- nearly nonstop since the Vietnam War began. That’s more than half a century of experience with war, American-style, and yet few in our world bother to draw the obvious conclusions.
Given the historical record, those conclusions should be staring us in the face. They are, however, the words that can’t be said in a country committed to a military-first approach to the world, a continual build-up of its forces, an emphasis on pioneering work in the development and deployment of the latest destructive technology, and a repetitious cycling through styles of war from full-scale invasions and occupations to counterinsurgency, proxy wars, and back again.
So here are five straightforward lessons -- none acceptable in what passes for discussion and debate in this country -- that could be drawn from that last half century of every kind of American warfare:
1. No matter how you define American-style war or its goals, it doesn’t work. Ever.
2. No matter how you pose the problems of our world, it doesn’t solve them. Never.
3. No matter how often you cite the use of military force to “stabilize” or “protect” or “liberate” countries or regions, it is a destabilizing force.
4. No matter how regularly you praise the American way of war and its “warriors,” the U.S. military is incapable of winning its wars.
5. No matter how often American presidents claim that the U.S. military is “the finest fighting force in history,” the evidence is in: it isn’t.