Straightening Out the Mess?
Former Ambassador John Bolton said the state of Iraq no longer exists and Chris Wallace shot back , One, what does that mean? Two, what are the ramifications?
You could go back four thousand years and not unscramble all the knots in what used to be Mesopotamia – the Sumerians were conquered by the Assyrians who were conquered by the Babylonians followed by Persians, Kurds, Muslims, Crusaders and Ottomans then after World War I a French and British diplomat leaning over a map dividing up the spoils of the Ottoman Empire created Syria and Iraq.
Drawing borders without rhyme or reason, putting lethal enemies who’d been fighting one another for centuries in one country, the diplomats gave one chunk of real estate (Syria) to France and another (Iraq) to Britain then ninety years later we marched into Baghdad and decided the Shias ought to rule the Kurds and Sunnis and lit the fuse to a powder-keg.
After we left Iraq, the Baghdad Shiites told us to send all the guns and weapons to them and they’d parcel them out to the Kurds and Sunnis but the last thing Baghdad wanted was armed Sunnis and Kurds – it kept the weapons for itself then ISIS showed up and rolled right over the Kurds and Sunnis and now we’ve got a four sided war on our hands – five if you count the Shiite militias from Iran.
We’ve landed ourselves in the middle of a mess that goes all the way back to World War I and Ambassador Bolton’s right: To whip ISIS we have to untie the knot (created by those diplomats) and give the Kurds and Sunnis and Shiites separate nations while bearing in mind the Baghdad Shiites are now ‘a satellite of the Ayatollahs in Tehran’ and pouring money and arms into them may not be such a good idea.
Straightening Out the Mess?
Former Ambassador John Bolton said the state of Iraq no longer exists and Chris Wallace shot back , One, what does that mean? Two, what are the ramifications?
You could go back four thousand years and not unscramble all the knots in what used to be Mesopotamia – the Sumerians were conquered by the Assyrians who were conquered by the Babylonians followed by Persians, Kurds, Muslims, Crusaders and Ottomans then after World War I a French and British diplomat leaning over a map dividing up the spoils of the Ottoman Empire created Syria and Iraq.
Drawing borders without rhyme or reason, putting lethal enemies who’d been fighting one another for centuries in one country, the diplomats gave one chunk of real estate (Syria) to France and another (Iraq) to Britain then ninety years later we marched into Baghdad and decided the Shias ought to rule the Kurds and Sunnis and lit the fuse to a powder-keg.
After we left Iraq, the Baghdad Shiites told us to send all the guns and weapons to them and they’d parcel them out to the Kurds and Sunnis but the last thing Baghdad wanted was armed Sunnis and Kurds – it kept the weapons for itself then ISIS showed up and rolled right over the Kurds and Sunnis and now we’ve got a four sided war on our hands – five if you count the Shiite militias from Iran.
We’ve landed ourselves in the middle of a mess that goes all the way back to World War I and Ambassador Bolton’s right: To whip ISIS we have to untie the knot (created by those diplomats) and give the Kurds and Sunnis and Shiites separate nations while bearing in mind the Baghdad Shiites are now ‘a satellite of the Ayatollahs in Tehran’ and pouring money and arms into them may not be such a good idea.