{"id":193429,"date":"2015-10-22T00:16:53","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T00:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=193429"},"modified":"2015-10-22T17:59:29","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T17:59:29","slug":"u-s-tells-iraq-if-you-ally-w-russia-against-isis-youre-our-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/u-s-tells-iraq-if-you-ally-w-russia-against-isis-youre-our-enemy\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Tells Iraq: If You Ally w. Russia Against ISIS, You’re Our Enemy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obama makes clear that America’s war against Russia is more important than America\u2019s war against ISIS.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

On October 14th, Russia\u2019s\u00a0Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov\u00a0said that the U.S. government had turned down the proposal<\/span><\/a>\u00a0from Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin for the U.S. and Russia to cooperate together to eliminate ISIS and other jihadists in Syria and in Iraq. Lavrov said:<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve made Americans the proposal announced by President Vladimir Putin\u00a0yesterday. We suggested that they send a [US] military delegation to\u00a0Moscow to\u00a0coordinate a number of joint steps, and after that we could\u00a0have sent to Washington a\u00a0top-level delegation led by Prime Minister\u00a0Dmitry Medvedev, [but]\u00a0\u2026\u00a0It is sad that our American colleagues in this case in fact do not side with those who\u00a0fight against terrorism.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Then, on Tuesday October 20th, as\u00a0CBS News online reported the following day,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0“The U.S. has told Iraq’s leaders they must choose between\u00a0ongoing American support in the battle against militants of\u00a0the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and asking the\u00a0Russians to intervene instead. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs\u00a0of Staff, said Tuesday that the Iraqis had\u00a0promised they\u00a0would not request any Russian airstrikes\u00a0or support for the\u00a0fight against ISIS.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Iraq already had done precisely that \u2013 and had even said that Russia seemed more committed to defeating ISIS than America is. As I summed up on October 10th<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Wednesday, October 7th, Reuters headlined, <\/i>\u201cIraq Leans Toward Russia in War on Islamic State,\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/a> and reported, from Baghdad, that, \u201cIraq \u2026 wants Moscow to have a bigger role than the United States in the war against the militant group, the head of parliament’s defense and security committee said on Wednesday.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier, in <\/i>an interview in English, with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, telecast on October 2nd, France24 TV<\/i><\/span><\/a> asked him how he would view an extension of Russia\u2019s anti-ISIS bombing campaign into Iraq, and he said (7:54), \u201cI would welcome it.\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

So, at some time between October 7th and October 20th, the U.S. convinced Iraq\u2019s leaders to, in essence, dis-<\/i>invite the Russians, instead of to ally with them against ISIS in Iraq.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Two alternative explanations are possible. Either the U.S. had promised the Iraqis that the U.S. will now really get serious about defeating ISIS in Iraq, or else the U.S. had promised the Iraqis that Iraq would be punished \u2013 at the IMF or elsewhere \u2013 if Iraq followed through on their announced intention to replace the U.S. with Russia. (Or, of course, the U.S. could have done both \u2013 the carrot, and the stick.)<\/span><\/p>\n

In either case (or both), the U.S. has made clear, to the Iraqis, that America will do anything to defeat Russia \u2013 even abandon the fight against ISIS in Iraq, if need be<\/i> \u2013 and that the U.S. will absolutely not ally with Russia against ISIS, under any circumstances.<\/span><\/p>\n

This makes abundantly clear, to the whole world, that the current American government considers its main enemy to be not jihadists, but Russians<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, already, U.S. President Barack Obama had made this clear when, in his\u00a0National Security Strategy 2015<\/i><\/span><\/a>, he named Russia on 17 of the 18 occasions in which he charged \u201caggression.\u201d The 18th instance was not Saudi Arabia,\u00a0the main funder of jihadists<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0but instead North Korea, which poses little real threat to any U.S. ally except South Korea, and none at all to the United States. (And, of course, the U.S. President didn\u2019t cite the U.S., which in a 2013 WIN\/Gallup International poll was overwhelmingly named the most throughout the world as \u201cthe country that represents the greatest threat to peace in the world today.\u201d<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama makes clear that America’s war against Russia is more important than America\u2019s war against ISIS. Eric Zuesse On October 14th, Russia\u2019s\u00a0Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov\u00a0said that the U.S. government had turned down the proposal\u00a0from Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin for the U.S. and Russia to cooperate together to eliminate ISIS and other jihadists in Syria and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":143859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461,1622],"tags":[115,30,1036,32,96,1035,535,38,907,59,524,49,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-193429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials","9":"category-featured","10":"tag-barack-obama","11":"tag-big-brother","12":"tag-breaking-news","13":"tag-cia","14":"tag-cover-up","15":"tag-daily-news","16":"tag-global-news","17":"tag-iraq","18":"tag-isis","19":"tag-military","20":"tag-russia","21":"tag-usa-news","22":"tag-warfare","23":"tag-white-house","24":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}