{"id":223631,"date":"2016-02-11T03:43:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T03:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/a-real-political-revolution-would-end-the-war-in-iraq\/"},"modified":"2016-02-11T03:43:54","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T03:43:54","slug":"a-real-political-revolution-would-end-the-war-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/a-real-political-revolution-would-end-the-war-in-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"A Real \u2018Political Revolution\u2019 Would End the War in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"bernie-sanders-iraq-war\"<\/p>\n

(Photo: Michael Vladon \/ Flickr)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

These days, Bernie Sanders doesn\u2019t say much about the Middle East. But if you\u2019ve heard him say nothing else on the subject, he\u2019s probably reminded you that he \u2014 unlike a certain former secretary of state \u2014 had the foresight to vote against the Iraq War when it came before Congress back in 2002.<\/p>\n

In fact, sometimes it seems like the only talking point on the broader Middle East Sanders feels comfortable delivering. \u201cNot only did I vote against that war, I helped lead the opposition,\u201d Sanders said<\/a> in response to a recent debate question about fighting the Islamic State, or ISIS. \u201cIt gives me no pleasure to tell you that much of what I feared would happen the day after Saddam Hussein was overthrown [did].\u201d It was a reminder he reiterated, to loud applause, in his victory speech<\/a> after winning the New Hampshire primary.<\/p>\n

At one level, that\u2019s perfectly understandable. It really can\u2019t be repeated enough that the Iraq War was the most disastrous U.S. foreign policy decision of at least the last generation. The invasion and subsequent occupation cost thousands of U.S. lives and trillions of U.S. dollars, and it left anywhere from a few hundred thousand to over a million Iraqi civilians dead<\/a>. It destabilized the region, exploded sectarian tensions, and led directly to the rise of ISIS.<\/p>\n

Not to mention, of course, it was based entirely on lies.<\/p>\n

When she was a senator from New York, Hillary Clinton didn\u2019t just vote for that war. As Foreign Policy In Focus <\/em>columnist Stephen Zunes noted recently, she proved an eager propagandist<\/a> for the Bush administration\u2019s false claims about Saddam Hussein\u2019s weapons of mass destruction in her own right. And, most perplexingly, she was still defending her vote for the war as late as 2007 \u2014 years<\/em> after the claims were disproved for good.<\/p>\n

So Clinton is vulnerable on the subject, and for good reason. But on another level, she wasn\u2019t wrong when she retorted, \u201cA vote in 2002 is not a plan to defeat ISIS.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe she just meant to burnish her own hawkish credentials. But the fact remains that whoever\u2019s elected this year is nearly guaranteed to inherit the war on ISIS that President Obama launched back in 2014. He or she will be the fifth consecutive U.S. president to preside over some variety of military intervention in Iraq \u2014 a dour chapter that\u2019s already continued for at least 25 years<\/a>, dating back to the Gulf War. (And that\u2019s not even counting the U.S. role<\/a> in the bloody Iran-Iraq war before that.)<\/p>\n

The good news is that Sanders sent some promising signals about his judgment on the last U.S. invasion before it was even launched \u2014 in fact, probably even more so than he\u2019s usually credited for. But the bad news is that his statements on the latest iteration of the conflict have been all over the map. In his bumbling calls for a \u201cMuslim coalition\u201d to stop ISIS, he\u2019s shown none of the acumen that so distinguished him over 13 years ago.<\/p>\n

Without a plan to resolve the ISIS war responsibly, the U.S. war in Iraq could reverberate through yet another generation. If Sanders is elected, that\u2019ll be a grim asterisk to his \u201cpolitical revolution\u201d indeed.<\/p>\n

Getting It Right\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, it\u2019s worth looking at what Sanders got right last time. For one thing, he didn\u2019t just vote no: He also gave a fairly remarkable floor speech explaining why, which a group backing his presidential campaign now features prominently on its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some of the speech will look familiar to anyone who remembers the back-and-forth over the claims about Saddam Hussein\u2019s arsenal the Bush administration used to justify the war. Sanders made clear he didn\u2019t really buy it. Even if Hussein did have the weapons, Sanders argued \u2014 a big if \u2014 there was no reason to presume a unilateral U.S. war was going to make anyone safer.<\/p>\n

Other parts of the address will look familiar to anyone who\u2019s followed Sanders himself \u2014 including a very Sanders-esque aside about how the push for war was distracting Congress from \u201csome of the most pressing economic issues affecting the well-being of ordinary Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

All that\u2019s fine: It was certainly beyond the reasoning of Hillary Clinton and all the other Democrats and Republicans who fell in line behind the war. But Sanders didn\u2019t stop there. He raised first and foremost the prospect that the war could exact a devastating human cost, particularly against civilians:<\/p>\n

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I have not heard any estimates of how many young American men and women might die in such a war or how many tens of thousands of women and children in Iraq might also be killed. As a caring nation, we should do everything we can to prevent the horrible suffering that a war will cause. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On this issue, Sanders was right beyond measure, and not only about the sectarian bloodletting that characterized the middle years of the war. Even today, ISIS is terrorizing huge swaths of Iraq\u2019s western and northern reaches, uprooting Shiites and ancient communities of Christians, Yazidis, and Turkmen. The Shiite militias arrayed against it, meanwhile, have been accused of carrying out ethnic cleansing<\/a> in the heavily Sunni areas where ISIS has taken hold.<\/p>\n

Somewhat more exceptional, though \u2014 at least in Washington \u2014 was the Vermont representative\u2019s explicit argument that the war was illegal, regardless of whatever Congress authorized that day. It\u2019s almost quaint to remember now, but the Bush administration\u2019s doctrine of \u201cpre-emptive war\u201d was really just a slightly different phrasing of the \u201cwars of aggression<\/a>\u201d expressly banned by the UN Charter, which is supposed to be binding for member countries. Here\u2019s how Sanders put it:<\/p>\n

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I am deeply concerned about the precedent that a unilateral invasion of Iraq could establish in terms of international law and the role of the United Nations. If President Bush believes that the U.S. can go to war at any time against any nation, what moral or legal objection could our government raise if another country chose to do the same thing?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, these norms exist for a reason. On what legal basis can Washington argue that Russia\u2019s involvement in Ukraine, for example, is any more egregious than U.S. actions in Iraq, among other places?<\/p>\n

Importantly, Sanders also showed that he understood \u2014 or at least that he was listening to people who understood \u2014 that the Bush administration\u2019s rosy predictions about what would happen in postwar Iraq were nonsense. Here were his surprisingly prescient questions about what would follow an invasion of Iraq:<\/p>\n

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I am concerned about the problems of so-called unintended consequences. Who will govern Iraq when Saddam Hussein is removed, and what role will the U.S. play in an ensuing civil war that could develop in that country? Will moderate governments in the region who have large Islamic fundamentalist populations be overthrown and replaced by extremists?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Those are questions the war\u2019s planners clearly didn\u2019t bother to consider. Through boneheaded policies like purging Baath party members from government jobs, disbanding the Sunni-dominated Iraqi army, and providing unyielding support to Iraq\u2019s increasingly sectarian Shiite-dominated postwar government, U.S. occupation authorities and their counterparts in Washington didn\u2019t just fail to contain sectarian fallout \u2014 they helped to stoke it.<\/p>\n

And now, thanks to a corresponding breakdown in neighboring Syria, the leading component of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq \u2014 the Islamic State \u2014 poses a mortal threat to several governments in the region.<\/p>\n

\"(Photo:<\/p>\n

(Photo: Phil Roeder | Flickr)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2026 And Getting It Wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

All that\u2019s to say, Bernie\u2019s position on Iraq was a great deal more prescient than a simple \u201cvote in 2002.\u201d It was canny and compassionate to boot. But what, then, should we make of his current proposal for how to fight ISIS?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how he summed it up<\/a> in the same New Hampshire debate:<\/p>\n

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[Let me] mention what the king of Jordan said. What he said is essentially the war against ISIS is a war for the soul of Islam, and it must be Muslim troops on the ground that will destroy ISIS with the support of a coalition of major powers \u2014 [the] U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and Russia.<\/em><\/p>\n

So our job is to provide them the military equipment that they need; the air support they need; special forces when appropriate. But at the end of the day for a dozen different reasons, not the least of which is that ISIS would like American combat troops on the ground so they could reach out to the Muslim world and say, \u201cLook, we\u2019re taking on those terrible Americans.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The combat on the ground must be done by Muslim troops with our support. We must not get involved in perpetual warfare in the Middle East.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s a lot to unpack here, and not all of it\u2019s encouraging.<\/p>\n

On the plus side, Sanders is absolutely right that ISIS would love nothing more than to draw the United States into a protracted war in the Middle East \u2014 the group has said as much<\/a> in its own publications<\/a>. That\u2019s as fine a reason as any to decline the invitation to send ground troops \u2014 and that includes \u201cspecial forces when appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if part of the goal is to avoid letting ISIS use combat with the United States as a recruiting tool \u2014 as al-Qaeda in Iraq did before it, and as the Taliban has done before and since \u2014 it\u2019s not terribly clear how launching thousands upon thousands of airstrikes and pumping millions of dollars\u2019 worth of weapons to various anti-ISIS factions wouldn\u2019t have the same impact.<\/p>\n

And what would the Sanders of 2002 say about the possibility of those airstrikes causing civilian casualties? USA Today <\/em>reported recently that civilian deaths in Syria and Iraq may far outpace<\/a> what the U.S. government has admitted. Indeed, civilian casualties aren\u2019t just tragic in their own right \u2014 they\u2019re part of what\u2019s making the region ungovernable today, for the simple reason that millions of Syrians and Iraqis have decided they can no longer live there safely. Who can blame them?<\/p>\n

Sanders also isn\u2019t wrong that the \u201cMuslim countries\u201d of the Middle East \u2014 including the people of Iraq and Syria, whatever their faith \u2014 should bear ultimate responsibility for the outcome, because they\u2019re the ones who have to live there. But this idea for a coalition of \u201cMuslim troops\u201d is dangerously wrongheaded.<\/p>\n

After all, who would supply them? Turkey, perhaps, or Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states? To varying degrees each of those countries is already deeply enmeshed in the greater Syrian conflict. They\u2019ve already funneled untold quantities of cash and materiel to a hodgepodge of Syrian rebel groups \u2014 many of whom may be opposed to ISIS but also happen to be Islamic extremists in their own right. Those governments are implacably opposed to the decidedly secular (if deeply compromised) Syrian regime, while the Turks are openly at war with the Kurds<\/a> \u2014 perhaps the most reliable anti-ISIS fighters in the whole region. Escalating their involvement is hardly a recipe for stability.<\/p>\n

What about Iran? The Shiite Iranians are surely enemies of ISIS, which considers Shiites apostates and has viciously purged them from its territory. But Iran has also been a key pillar of support for the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, a member of the Shiite-linked Alawite sect, as well as of various militias in Iraq that have been likened to anti-Sunni death squads. With ISIS thriving in the Sunni heartlands of both Iraq and Syria, increased Iranian military involvement \u2014 while potentially helpful against ISIS itself \u2014 is only going to deepen the political crisis that\u2019s enabled the group to thrive on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border.<\/p>\n

And those \u201cgreat powers\u201d?<\/p>\n

Sanders of all people should know that hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops succeeded only in breaking Iraq, perhaps irreparably \u2014 after all, he predicted it. There\u2019s no reason to expect a more modest contingent of air strikes and special forces to exact a more favorable outcome. And there\u2019s precious little to prevent the arms that Washington\u2019s peddling to the Iraqi government and Syrian rebel groups from falling into the hands of extremists<\/a> \u2014 indeed, that\u2019s already happened<\/a>, to the tune of millions of dollars\u2019 worth of heavy weaponry.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Russia\u2019s backing Assad, and its own anti-ISIS air campaign has targeted plenty of Syrian opposition groups that aren\u2019t actually ISIS<\/a> \u2014 including many of the same ones propped up by those Muslim countries that Sanders believes belong in the coalition. And they\u2019re racking up a disheartening toll of civilian lives<\/a> while they\u2019re at it.<\/p>\n

And as far as Western European countries are concerned, the example from Afghanistan \u2014 a war Sanders did support, unfortunately \u2014 should be instructive: After more than a decade of grinding counterinsurgency operations failed to dislodge the Taliban or improve governance in war-torn Afghanistan, the U.S. and European-led NATO coalition quietly disbanded<\/a> in 2014, leaving mostly Americans left to run out the clock. It was an abject failure, and there\u2019s no reason to expect a laundry list of coalition partners against ISIS to be any more successful.<\/p>\n

Perpetual War<\/strong><\/p>\n

In short, Sanders learned the wrong lessons from Iraq. The unilateralism of the war may have been a problem in its own right, but there\u2019s simply no reason to believe a multilateral coalition \u2014 one spearheaded by either Muslim countries or the West \u2014 will be any more successful if its fundamental strategy is flawed.<\/p>\n

The simple fact is that there\u2019s a huge population of Sunni Arabs in particular who\u2019ve been totally abandoned by the political regimes of Mesopotamia. In Iraq, Shiites have consolidated power in Baghdad, while Alawites and other Syrian minorities have hunkered down in the regime-controlled portions of Syria. Meanwhile Kurds on both sides of the border have coalesced into their own quasi-autonomous regions.<\/p>\n

\"iran-veterans-against-war-IVAW-right-to-heal-iraq-afghanistan\"<\/p>\n

(Photo: Joseph Holmes \/ Flickr)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Along with a smattering of Syrian rebel fighters, all of these groups are fighting ISIS<\/a> where it\u2019s encroaching on their respective enclaves. But they have neither the means nor the will to expunge ISIS from the Sunni Arab heartlands of Iraq and Syria. In the stark sectarian aftermath of the Iraq War that Sanders rightly anticipated, those Sunnis simply don\u2019t factor into the political programs of their better-organized neighbors. So for now they\u2019re left with ISIS.<\/p>\n

Even in the extremely unlikely event that an international coalition overcomes its internal contradictions and eradicates the Islamic State by force, there will always be some new force to fill that gaping political wound \u2014 just as ISIS is doing now, and just as al-Qaeda in Iraq and the broader Iraqi Sunni insurgency did before it. Before we know it, we\u2019ll be back to debating just what new combination of airstrikes, ground troops, and arms shipments will fit the bill this <\/em>time.<\/p>\n

If Sanders had simply inveighed against America playing \u201cworld policeman,\u201d or even explicitly endorsed leaving the region to its own devices, that might have sounded callous. But one could\u2019ve read between the lines and perhaps found a reasonably compelling call for the United States to stop salting the wounds it opened in Iraq and beyond.<\/p>\n

Yet that\u2019s not what he did. In conceding demands for yet more airstrikes and arms shipments, Sanders called for an end to America\u2019s \u201cperpetual warfare in the Middle East\u201d while simultaneously endorsing our participation in it.<\/p>\n

Bad Company<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the end, Sanders\u2019 approach to the \u201cISIS crisis\u201d isn\u2019t so different from Hillary Clinton\u2019s<\/a> \u2014 he just happened to vote against the war that sparked it. But here\u2019s a clue for Bernie: If Hillary got it wrong about Iraq last time \u2014 and she did, catastrophically \u2014 there\u2019s a good chance she\u2019s getting it wrong now. That\u2019s not the company you want to keep.<\/p>\n

Actually solving the ISIS problem could prove remarkably vexing, given the incredible complexity of the Syrian civil war, the sectarian balance in Iraq, and the broader regional politics at play. But the main ingredient is simple enough: Both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border need political systems that make space for everyone who lives there \u2014 especially the Sunnis whose heartland ISIS has been gobbling up.<\/p>\n

So forget military intervention: These are fundamentally diplomatic challenges. They may be tricky to execute, but given the guaranteed failure of perpetual war, the diplomatic route is the only viable one available. Taking it would let Sanders get back to the business he started in 2002 \u2014 making space between himself and Hillary Clinton on the Middle East.<\/p>\n

In Iraq, that means negotiating greater political space for Sunnis in a Shiite-dominated establishment \u2014 a process that could entail making concessions to Iran (which is influential in Baghdad), conditioning all forms of U.S. assistance on political reforms, or even providing payouts to the Sunni tribes of the west that were virtually abandoned by the central government. An impending referendum<\/a> on independence for Iraqi Kurdistan could help impel some urgency along these lines, since Baghdad will be hard pressed to retake large cities like Mosul from ISIS without Kurdish help.<\/p>\n

In Syria, it means negotiating a ceasefire at least between Assad and the more mainline Syrian rebels. Neither side has shown much interest in making the necessary concessions, but that\u2019s because they can both count on the support of regional allies and funders to keep them fighting. So the first order of business has to be an international arms embargo on the parties fueling the war.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has some leverage here if it wishes to use it: Washington has longstanding arms-peddling relationships with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states; Turkey is a NATO ally; Russia shares an interest in combating Islamic extremism; and diplomatic relations are improving with Iran. Finally, Bernie says he\u2019s proud of fighting the military-industrial complex<\/a>, at least when they\u2019re not building stuff in his state<\/a>. So turning off the arms spigot from Washington should be plenty appealing to him.<\/p>\n

All these things will take time \u2014 but perpetual war takes forever.<\/p>\n

In the absence of a political solution, meanwhile, the one thing we can <\/em>accomplish right now is to make life a little less miserable for the millions of innocent people impacted by the war. That means ramping up U.S. assistance for badly underfunded UN appeals<\/a> to feed and protect the war\u2019s refugees, and accepting many thousands more refugees here in the United States.<\/p>\n

A Real Political Revolution<\/strong><\/p>\n

I understand that none of these ideas is sexy on the level of single-payer healthcare, free higher education, or taking America back from the billionaires. Those are worthy causes in their own right, and the voters fueling Sanders\u2019 \u201crevolution\u201d respond well to them. If that\u2019s where Bernie sees his path to the White House, fine.<\/p>\n

But the fact is, the lives of millions of people in the Middle East ride on this election just as much as ours do \u2014 and perhaps more immediately. If there\u2019s anything left of the Sanders who voted against this war in 2002 \u2014 and who preaches against perpetual war now \u2014 he\u2019ll recognize that their fate is tied up inextricably with our own.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a caring nation,\u201d Sanders said back then, \u201cwe should do everything we can to prevent the horrible suffering that a war will cause.\u201d And here let\u2019s add a recent statement by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who just announced<\/a> plans to end Canada\u2019s involvement in the ISIS air war: \u201cThe people terrorized by ISIS every day don\u2019t need our vengeance. They need our help.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would be nice to hear some similar words from Sanders today \u2014 followed by a real plan to end the war he so presciently opposed. Because a real political revolution doesn\u2019t just mean taking our economic policy back from the billionaires. It means taking our foreign policy back from the carpet bombers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This piece was reprinted from Foreign Policy In Focus<\/a> by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Photo: Michael Vladon \/ Flickr) These days, Bernie Sanders doesn\u2019t say much about the Middle East. But if you\u2019ve heard him say nothing else on the subject, he\u2019s probably reminded you that he \u2014 unlike a certain former secretary of state \u2014 had the foresight to vote against the Iraq War when it came before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":223632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-223631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223631","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}