January 6th 2020

By Mark Sumner

Daily Kos

Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003: “From the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”

Mike Pompeo, January 3, 2020: “I know that the Iraqi people will ultimately demand that the Iranians get out.”

It was never possible for the United States to “win” in Iraq. It was, after all, an invasion founded on a basis of not just poor intelligence, but absolute lies. Both the public and Congress were presented with falsified evidence that Saddam Hussein represented such a threat to Americans, that there was no option but to expend both lives and dollars in seeking his removal. Much of that so-called evidence was ludicrous on its face. So were the assurances that the invasion of Iraq would be welcomed by Iraqis, and would make Americans safer.

Seventeen years later, history is delivering not just a repeat, but a sickening sequel that appears to hit every note on the descending scale of deception. An imminent threat. A bad man who must die. Promises that the action will be greeted with celebration. And assurances that the result will be greater safety. It would be tempting to call it a low-budget follow-up … if the potential for much greater costs ahead didn’t seem so very, very possible.

There’s no doubt that Trump’s actions, both in authorizing air strikes against militia bases and in assassinating Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, are related to his need for a distraction from impeachment proceedings. Every day seems to bring fresh information demonstrating Trump’s corrupt acts in Ukraine and his financial ties to Russia. This dog was in desperate need of wagging.

But there’s something else that probably tipped Trump’s hand when it came to taking “far out” action.  Under Donald Trump, the situation in Iraq has utterly disintegrated, and not just in the failing-to-make-progress sense that has plagued every administration since the original mistake. Trump’s inattention to Iraq, his withdrawal from the nuclear treaty with Iran, his betrayal of the Kurds, his closeness to Saudi autocrat Mohammed bin Salman, his generally erratic strategy-free approach to the Middle East … All of it has contributed to not just failing to collect any payoff from America’s $1 trillion boondoggle, but to pushing Iraq into a union with Iran that represents a whole new level of disaster.

In television appearances on Friday morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was quick to point out that Iranian influence in Iraq had been a concern of protesters in Baghdad for weeks. Pompeo followed up by both talking about and tweeting a claim that Iraqis were “dancing in the streets” to celebrate the U.S. assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. Pompeo’s video shows perhaps a hundred people in Tahrir Square, where protesters have been encamped for more than three months and have engaged in a series of clashes with the Iraqi government.

But on Saturday morning, thousands of Iraqis really did swarm the streets of Baghdad for a different reason. As BBC News reports, a huge crowd began assembling in the early hours. They marched from Baghdad International Airport where Soleimani was killed along with several Iraqi militia leaders, all the way to the Green Zone in the center of the city. And all along the route, they kept up a chant that is more familiar from the streets of Tehran than from Baghdad; a chant of “Death to America.”

Like the protesters who scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy following air strikes against militia bases on December 29, the marchers in Baghdad on Saturday carried Iranian flags. Pompeo was one of several Republicans who on Friday expressed the idea that taking out Soleimani would generate a kind of popular response that would force Iraqi leaders to distance themselves from Iran. But that idea is even more ludicrous than Cheney’s “greeted as liberators.”

Because what already happened is that Iraqi leaders have agreed that it’s the U.S. that should get out. The reason that thousands of militia members left the area of the U.S. embassy wasn’t that they were frightened off by fly-overs or the arrival of 100 Marines. It was because Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi gave them exactly what they wanted. He agreed to allow legislation to move forward in parliament calling for the removal of all U.S. forces from Iraq. That legislation had been blocked … until Trump bombed the militia bases.

Abdul-Mahdi is himself a Shiite, with close associations to Iranian leaders. In fact, 68% of the people in Iraq are Shiite. The U.S. has roughly 5,300 military personnel on the ground in Iraq. A close alliance with Iran has both large support among the public, and is backed by hundreds of thousands of militia members who are spread throughout the country. 

In 2019, the government in Iraq has restricted U.S. airspace and ground forces have been limited in their areas of operations. The Iraqi government has issued multiple statements to remind U.S. forces that they are only present to provide training. Nothing more. Abdul-Mahdi repeated these statements on December 29, when he spoke out against the U.S. attacks on Iranian-aligned militia bases. There are no such restrictions on the militia. They’re everywhere.

Donald Trump has destroyed U.S. support from the Kurdish minority in northern Iraq. Through systematic neglect and erratic behavior, he has destroyed U.S. connections to the Iraqi government in Baghdad. The only people in Iraq not championing a closer alliance with Iran at this point are, with sickening irony, the small Sunni minority that once supported Saddam Hussein. 

Posted with permission

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was never going to end well. Trump seems determined that it not just end in the ugliest way possible, but generate a greater conflict, and a greater threat, in the process.