...aaand once again it turns into a late-night dorm room debate about "what if?" scenarios and WW2. It's like it's 1992 all over again.
Back to the matter at hand: Iraq is disintegrating, just like experts warned it would back when this whole mess started, and back when then-Senator Barack Obama got elected on a platform of ending the war and bringing the boys home, even though a lot of analysts warned that the timetable was too optimistic. So far the administration and, tellingly, the media have avoided using the term "civil war," but let's call it what it is: Iraq is in a state of civil war. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what they call in the foreign affairs business a "shitstorm."
So what is the United States to do? There is no political will on either side of the aisle, nor public support, for sending American troops back into Iraq. The idea of "air support," meaning stepped-up drone strikes, has been bandied about, with varying degrees of meh all around. But what other option is there? If this ISIL group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, were to take control of the nation it would be a bad thing. The Kurdish far north, which is virtually a de facto independent country, has been much more stable and prosperous than the rest of Iraq, and so far has been untouched by the fighting. They are taking advantage of the situation to advance their goal to become a fully independent state, in fact, and I don't blame them. They'll never have a better chance. And that's part of the shitshow, because the United States really doesn't want that to happen, because as amuch as we like and support the Iraqi Kurds, we also don't want to piss off the Turks, who would be very unhappy to suddenly have a Kurdish state on their borders, especially given the unrest in their own Kurdish regions. We want to maintain the status quo, with Iraqi Kurdistan's quasi-independence staying quasi.
But in order for that to happen we must have a friendly government in Baghdad. ISIL would not be a friendly government. Their goal is to create a modern-day Islamic caliphate stretching from Lebanon through Syria and to Iraq. They are one of the principal rebel groups currently fighting the Assad regime in Syria. Another layer to the shitcake. This is why the Assad regime still stands, why the administration made such contortions to avoid the use of force in Syria: because they knew what was waiting in the wings. ISIL is angry-Islamic and militant in the Iran-in-1979 style. It is in no one's interests, except those of Muslim fundamentalists, for ISIL to control a nation-state, much less one stretching from Iraq to the Levant. This is the territory they currently control:
That's a BIG chunk of Iraq controlled by ISIS. And Iraqi Kurdish fighters have seized the city of Kirkuk and essentially taken over after the collapse of the Iraqi army. When that much of your territory is in the hands of armed militants, you know what you've got?
You've got yourself a civil war.
Or a shitstorm. Either way.
