Iran Sends Missiles to Iraq: US Finally Shows Concern for Sectarianism, Civilian Casualties

From the very beginning, when George W. Bush and his co-defendants wanted to invade Iraq over the 9/11 attacks, the US war in Iraq has been promoted, waged and defended with a complete lack of self-awareness of the illegal nature of the war and the devastation that can be laid directly at the feet of the US. Today we have a new chapter in that stunning absence of conscience, as the US engages in hand-wringing over the discovery of Iranian missiles in Iraq:

Iran has deployed advanced rockets and missiles to Iraq to help fight the Islamic State in Tikrit, a significant escalation of firepower and another sign of Iran’s growing influence in Iraq.

United States intelligence agencies detected the deployments in the past few weeks as Iraq was marshaling a force of 30,000 troops — two-thirds of them Shiite militias largely trained and equipped by Iran, according to three American officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence reports on Iran.

So, why is the US so concerned about this development? Read on:

Iran has not yet launched any of the weapons, but American officials fear the rockets and missiles could further inflame sectarian tensions and cause civilian casualties because they are not precision guided.

That is just effing unbelievable. Iranian missiles might “further inflame sectarian tensions and cause civilian casualties”? Really?

How about those sectarian tensions that are already in Iraq? Where did they get their biggest push? Recall that when we invaded, Saddam ruled through the Baath Party. The Baath Party was secular. The very first act (pdf) by the US military after overthrowing Saddam’s government was to disband the Baath Party. With its one secular ruling political party disbanded at the point of a gun, Iraq turned to organizing around the sectarian faiths that encompassed both mosques and militias. Much of the remaining time the US military spent on active combat duty in Iraq involved pitting Shias against Sunnis while paying lip-service to the need for “reconciliation”.

And then there are the civilian casualties. Although Iraq Body Count puts the number at a more conservative 100,000 or so, a more encompassing study documents that half a million civilians have died in Iraq as a direct result of the US invasion. And don’t get me started on the effects of the depleted uranium used in Fallujah.

The hubris involved in the US suggesting that Iran’s missiles could inflame sectarianism or cause civilian casualties is nothing short of staggering. But none of the idiots engaging in this hand-wringing will ever be forced to account for the real source of sectarian tensions and civilian casualties in Iraq.

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7 replies
  1. Betty says:

    Jim, your sense of outrage is appreciated. Too bad the people that need to understand this perspective just don’t seem to care.

  2. John B. says:

    “But none of the idiots engaging in this hand-wringing will ever be forced to account for the real source of sectarian tensions and civilian casualties in Iraq.”

    Well, maybe not. But they ought to be…

  3. Don Bacon says:

    “…could further inflame sectarian tensions and cause civilian casualties because they are not precision guided.”
    .
    WaPo:

    For four months, the B-1B bombers of the U.S. Air Force’s 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron based in Qatar (an ISIS supporter) relentlessly hit Islamic State fighters in eastern Kobani from the air, slowly watching the line of control in that city swing back to Washington’s Kurdish allies.
    .
    The air tactics developed over Kobani, senior U.S. officials said, will hopefully prove to be a model of what close communication between an allied force on the ground and American aircraft in the skies can do. The lesson of Kobani, officials said, will be tried again when moderate Syrian rebels trained by the U.S. enter the fight against the Islamic State militants inside other parts of Syria.

    The results of the “the air tactics developed over Kobani” causing “the line of control in that city swing back to Washington’s Kurdish allies” and which “will be tried again” can be seen here.
    .
    The “air tactics” used is called “carpet bombing” which is known to be harmful to civilian men, women and children, as well as pets and other living things. American pilots call it “going Winchester” when a warplane drops every bomb on board and it was not uncommon over Kobani. The B-1B bomber carries 75,000 pounds of bombs.

  4. Denis says:

    Someone help me out with these Iraqi body count numbers, please.

    Bush’s kill number is said to be somewhere between 100k and 500k.

    But recall the famous Lesley Stahl 60 Minutes interview with Albright in 1995. Clinton had only been in office 2 years and he was accused by the medical journal The Lancet of causing 500k deaths of babies and toddlers. Albright famously said the price was “worth it.” Bill Richardson later ditto’d that.

    OK, that was after only 2 years in office, and counting deaths of only wee children. What was Clinton’s total body count after 8 years of bombing Iraq’s water treatment and medical facilities and denying them medical necessities and chlorine to treat water? It had to be well over 1 million.

    I mean who the freak cares if a child is killed by a cluster bomb or typhoid — if an American president is responsible, that’s one more death to be chalked up in his column.

    My point is this: Why do liberals get their panties all in a twist over Bush’s Iraq body count while ignoring Clinton’s, which had to be much worse? Spurting on a blue dress was the smartest thing Clinton ever did — it diverted public attention away from the fact that he is as much a war criminal as his successor.

    • Jim White says:

      .
      Meh. I’m just as pissed over deaths from sanctions as those from war. I harp all the time on Iranian civilian deaths and economic hardships from the ongoing sanctions.
      .
      But the point of this post was the deaths from military actions, not the sanctions that preceded them.

  5. wallace says:

    quote”Meh. I’m just as pissed over deaths from sanctions as those from war”unquote

    “Meh. I think the price was worth it.” Madeleine Albright

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0WDCYcUJ4o

    Someone should have made her dig the graves..

    quote” But the point of this post was the deaths from military actions, not the sanctions that preceded them.”unquote

    Meh. I don’t think it makes a difference to the dead.
    But I understand your point.

  6. bevin says:

    Jim’s post is very useful and pertinent. And so is Denis’s: the degradation of infrastructure, medical facilities and food supplies not only kills people but kills more and more as the years pass.
    The famous Lancet study suggesting that a million had died as a result of the 2003 invasion is now about ten years old which means that the figure of a million has probably increased faster than a Koch Bros trust fund. Albright’s boasted tally of children is now only a small part of a number of dead Iraqis which is reaching genocidal proportions.
    The truth is that all those old post Cold War calculations as to the number of Mao’s or Stalin’s victims- routinely trotted out to justify the, Goebbels suggested, idea that Communist and Nazi governments were equally bad- now need to be compared with, for example the demographic consequences of “shock therapy” in Russia. My guess is that the casualties of that project far exceed those of Stalin’s collectivisation or Mao’s Great Leap forward. All three of these projects had, as their rationale, economic theories. Of the two “Communist” experiments it has been argued that the economies involved were subject to exclusion from the international economy and were undertaken to break out of regimes of sanctions. As to the destruction of Russia’s post Soviet economy the only excuses would appear to be that the economists were demented while the geo-politicians, advising Clinton, were intent on crippling a nation which had made the mistake of trusting their sense of decency and goodwill.

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