by Sam Rolley
As Iraq falls apart at the hands of an al-Qaida offshoot more extreme and well-organized than most of the Islamic bad guys Americans are accustomed to hearing about, the sale of 36 American-made F-16 fighters is set to move forward.
Last week, according to a Time report, Iraq’s ambassador to the U.S. visited Fort Worth, Texas, to take ownership of the first of the planes he referred to as “a clear sign to the world and the region that a stable and strong Iraq, in a partnership of choice with the United States, is what we are after.”
Unfortunately, a terror group calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq in Syria (ISIS) didn’t get the memo about the stable, strong Iraq that officials claim exists after more than a decade of U.S. occupation.
Time’s Mark Thompson explains the situation currently unfolding in Iraq thusly:
"It’s nothing short of tragic to see Iraq falling apart as the ancient battle between Sunnis and Shi’ites continues after the U.S. spent more than $1 trillion–and 4,486 lives–to overthrow Saddam Hussein in hopes of replacing him with someone better. Fallujah, Mosul, Tikrit–cities where U.S. troops spent eight years dying to give Iraq another chance–are now in the hands of an al-Qaeda offshoot battling the U.S.-backed Iraqi government."
An Iraqi named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi formed ISIS after disagreements over ideology and strategy with other jihad groups forced a split in the midst of the Syrian civil war. The group is said to be so extreme in its fundamentalist religious teachings and so ruthless punishment of anyone with whom it disagrees that even al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called for ISIS to leave Syria and return to Iraq.
Muslim Syrian rebels in some regions have actively fought against ISIS forces at different points during the civil war, rebuking the extreme group’s calls for a unified Islamic state across the Middle East.
While the group’s reputation hasn’t earned it much favor among rebel factions in Syria, ISIS still controls a broad swath of territory that stretches from Aleppo to the recently overtaken Iraqi cities.
“This is a force that is ideologically motivated, battle hardened and incredibly well equipped,” Douglas Ollivant of the New America Foundation, and a former White House adviser on Iraq, told The Washington Post. “It also runs the equivalent of a state. It has all the trappings of a state, just not an internationally recognized one.”
ISIS’s territory holdings are bolstered by its financial resources such as oil field revenues and wealthy Sunni donors managed under its version of a terrorist governmental structure. The group has set up schools and other services in areas it controls. It also operates a court system, where harsh punishments like beheadings and amputations are inflicted upon anyone accused of violating Islamic law.
Poorly trained Iraqi soldiers reportedly fled Mosul when they learned Isis was coming, as staying to fight meant certain death, imprisonment or conscription.
Last month, Iraqi forces were becoming increasingly worried that Isis was preparing an offensive in the western portion of the country and, realizing that their forces were unprepared, asked U.S. officials to consider airstrikes. On Thursday, a report in The New York Times indicated that Washington declined — after all, President Obama has been claiming that the newly democratic country is in good shape since 2011.
On Thursday, the President said that all options were being considered to respond to the advancing ISIS threat. Vice President Joe Biden vowed that the U.S. is preparing to “intensify” support of the Iraqi security forces.
According to White House spokesman Josh Earnest, the Obama Administration has provided the Iraqi security forces with hundreds of Hellfire missiles, millions of rounds of ammunition for small arms, thousands of rounds of tank ammunition, helicopter-fired rockets, machine guns, grenades, flares, sniper rifles, M-16s and M-4 rifles.
The first of the F-16 fighters being sent to the nation are slated to arrive in September, with two planes being sent per month through 2015. But by then, Iraq may be largely overrun by ISIS which would make it easy for the equipment to fall into the wrong hands. Already, there are reports of ISIS seizing military equipment the U.S. handed off to Iraq in areas the terrorists now control.
Iraq’s top national security official Falih Al-Fayyadh said the planes would be “a weapon in the hands of all the people.”
Unfortunately, it’s looking more and more like the military assets will end up being a weapon in the hands of the wrong people.
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