A Resurgent al-Qaida in Iraq Highlights the Folly of Obama's Non-intervention Middle East Policy

It will not come as a great surprise to Middle East observers to learn that al-Qaida-linked militants control much of the Iraqi city of Fallujah and other nearby towns, fighting off efforts by troops with air support to regain control, according to eyewitnesses. Al-Qaida fighters have seized military equipment provided by the US Marines to Fallujah police, whose headquarters were seized, according to Uthman Mohamed, a local reporter in Fallujah in Iraq’s western Anbar province. The reporter spoke by phone to Bloomberg News and AP. He confirmed rumors already current : "There’s no sign of government forces inside Fallujah, and most of the fighting is taking place on a highway that links the city to Baghdad," he said. Halima Ahmed, a health official in the province, said in a phone interview that the death toll in Fallujah in the past three days of fighting is 36, mostly civilians killed by army shelling. The military also has carried out air strikes targeting suspected al-Qaida fighters, according to Al Jazeera reports. Fallujah became notorious when insurgents in 2004 killed four American security contractors and hung their burned bodies from a bridge. Nearly 100 US Marines were killed and hundreds wounded in the battle of Fallujah in 2004. Fallujah, the provincial capital Ramadi and other cities were repeated battlegrounds until 2007, as sectarian bloodshed mounted. The town also became a focus of the successful 2007 “surge” of US forces. The BBC reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent reinforcements on January 1 to dislodge militants from Fallujah and Ramadi. According to the BBC, fighting erupted after troops broke up a protest camp by Sunni Arabs in the city of Ramadi last Monday. The Sunni consistently have accused the Shia-led government of marginalizing them and have been angered by what they feel to be discrimination by the Maliki government. They also say their minority community is being targeted by anti-terrorism measures implemented to stem the surge in sectarian violence. The recent fighting in Fallujah and Ramadi has pitted government troops against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), which is affiliated with al-Qaida, and Sunni tribesmen, looking to al-Qaida for help in their battle with Maliki, on the other. The Fallujah fighting is part of an escalation of violence in Iraq in 2013, which saw the greatest number of civilian casualties in the last five years because of the sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Moslems that also has raged in Syria and Lebanon. The war to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the Alawite offshoot of Shiite Islam backed by Iran, is being fought by Sunni rebels, now overshadowed by al-Qaida Isis fighters called in to help them when western powers followed Obama's non-intervention decision. But the rebels are still supported by Saudi Arabia, the region’s biggest Sunni power. The US has stepped up arms supplies to help Maliki’s Shiite-led government suppress the group, agreeing to send helicopters, missiles and surveillance drones. While President Barack Obama continues to refuse to intervene directly in the Syrian war, the US may come under increasing pressure to contain the fallout from Obama's decision if al-Qaida militants gain a foothold in western Iraq. Ryan Crocker, US ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, said in a recent interview : “If al-Qaida manages to really take hold of western Iraq, that’s a pretty substantial base on Arab territory, where they’d have security and the space to start thinking about operations wherever they want to think about,....It’s exactly what they had in Afghanistan before 9/11.” There is little support in the US for renewed military involvement in Iraq, where 4,489 Americans were killed and 51,778 wounded in action after the US invaded the country 11 years ago. Obama has listed ending the war in Iraq as one of his main accomplishments. But Iraq has paid a high price for the Obama-engineered American withdrawal. Civilian fatalities in Iraq, including police, totaled 7,818 last year, with 18,000 wounded, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq. A Pentagon spokesman, Army Colonel Steve Warren, told reporters in Washington on Friday that the US is “keeping an eye on the situation.” He said the US is providing assistance to Iraqi authorities in accordance with the security framework agreement between the countries, without giving details. So far, the violence hasn’t affected Iraq’s major oil fields, the country’s main source of revenue. Output rose by 100,000 barrels a day last month to 3.2 million barrels, the most since August, according to a Bloomberg survey. Iraq is the second-biggest producer in OPEC after Saudi Arabia. ~~~~~ Dear readers, it was Henry Ford who said, "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten." And to Albert Einstein is attributed the important addition : "The definition of insanity is dong the same thing over and over and expecting different results." ~~~~~ The indecisiveness of President Obama - and his outright refusal to defend either territory or friendly governments or suffering people - has led to a massive resurgence of al-Qaida and the Taliban in the Middle East. What would have been the relatively straightforward task of defending controlled ground has become, because of his withdrawal and attempts to make a virtue of abandoning allies and fledgling democratic movements, a major crisis. Where can Obama and the US now draw a defensive line in the Middle East? Afghanistan? The Karzai deal with the Taliban is all but signed in the blood of American soldiers and Afghan civilians who will once more be under the Taliban whip. Iraq? Perhaps, but it raises the prospect of beginning again with all the gearing up and loss of life needed to regain what had once been secured if America had just held on in Iraq. And Iraq will now be a two or three front war, with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas eager to use terrorist attacks against their enemies, America, Israel and Saudi Arabia. And let us not be fooled by Obama's self-serving words about Iraqis and Afghans now being able to save themselves. It is not true. One has only to look at the swiftness with which al-Qaida, the Taliban and their jihadist allies have become the dominant forces in Afghanistan, which threatens a weak nuclear Pakistan and its neighbor, India, to the east - and in Iraq and Syria, which threatens Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, to the west and south. AND, if Obama refuses to stand up and be counted, we may be sure that the US military, NATO, Europe and Turkey and its military, as well as Vladimir Putin and his military concerning the Caucasus and the Russian southern tier, all of them are even now strategizing about how to keep the al-Qaida radical islamist terrorists at bay. Because, make no mistake, their next goals are Turkey, a weakened Greece, the Balkans and the Moslem areas of southern Russia. ~~~~~ But, you can sleep well, Mr. Obama. It will not all blow up before you and your naive and dangerously Chamberlainesque White House are gone forever, leaving us to clean up the dispicable mess you will have left behind.