Posted on 06/18/2014 10:25:40 AM PDT by Uncle Miltie
The battle between Iraq’s government and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which threatens to plunge Iraq back into the chaos of sectarian civil war, puts Saudi Arabia in an increasingly awkward position.
The Saudis have long been at loggerheads with the Iran-backed Shia-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, seeing Iraq as a key theater of its battle for influence with Tehran that also plays out in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. But while ISIL poses the deadliest challenge yet to Maliki, its rapid emergence as a key regional player threatens Saudi interests as well as those of Iran. Still, the military effort to reverse ISIL’s rapid gains over the past week with possible U.S. and Iranian assistance is likely, at least in the short term, to strengthen the hand of Riyadh’s adversaries in Iraq.
The Saudis took several days to respond to last week’s news that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was involved in the Iraqi fight against ISIL, and that some form of alliance of convenience between the U.S. and Iran was being mooted to stabilize security in Iraq.
When Riyadh did speak out on the crisis on Monday, it blamed events on Maliki’s failure to reconcile with Iraq’s Sunnis, and it also issued a veiled threat to Iran.
A Saudi government statement said that the events of the past week “could not have taken place if it was not for the sectarian and exclusionary policies implemented in Iraq over the past years that threatened its stability and sovereignty.”
Riyadh said it rejected “foreign interference in [Iraq’s] internal affairs,” and called for a state that would realize the “participation of all components of the Iraqi people in determining the future.”
Maliki has been widely accused of governing on a sectarian basis, using the demographic advantage of the Shia to prevail in elections but using the instruments of power to exclude and alienate the Sunni minority, many of whom had enjoyed comparative advantages under the regime of Saddam Hussein.
“Ideally, what Riyadh would want is some sort of political accommodation … where Sunni interests are better represented,” said Toby C. Jones, a professor of Middle East studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He said Riyadh wants Iraq “beholden to interests that the Saudis could support.”
But the rapid gains of ISIL in the past week present Riyadh with a policy dilemma.
“[The Saudis] blame Maliki for inviting this crisis by alienating Sunnis and for failing spectacularly when faced with the ISIL blitz. But their fear and distrust of ISIL is real. This is a group that would storm Riyadh and Mecca if it could,” said Matthew M. Reed, vice president at Foreign Reports, a Middle East–focused consulting firm in Washington, D.C.
Like the United States, then, Saudi Arabia finds itself caught in a security conundrum with no clear endgame — although with far closer proximity to the consequences of the ISIL surge.
“The Saudis are caught,” said F. Gregory Gause III, a professor of Middle East studies at the University of Vermont. “They don’t like Iran or Maliki … but they don’t like [ISIL] either. I think they’re risk-averse and divided about what they want to do.”
Riyadh is hardly unique in demanding greater Sunni inclusion in the Shia-dominated Maliki political order. The same view has been constantly reiterated by President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials, and endorsed by many analysts who view Sunni alienation from the new political order in Iraq as increasingly undermining the security of the Iraqi state.
“The question of Sunni Arab participation in Iraq’s political order that has plagued the transition [from Saddam Hussein] since its inception is as acute and explosive as ever,” warned the International Crisis Group in a report published in August 2013, months before ISIL’s meteoric rise on the Iraqi battlefield.
Some experts believe that the Saudis’ embrace of Sunni armed groups fighting the Iran-backed regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria has inadvertently fueled the crisis in Iraq — ISIL operates on both sides of the Syria-Iraq border, and is beyond the orders or influence of any government. (Advocates of greater backing for Syria’s rebels counter that insufficient support to rival groups there allowed ISIL to prosper.)
On Tuesday, the Iraqi government blasted the Saudis, accusing them of supporting ISIL.
"We hold [Saudi Arabia] responsible for supporting these groups financially and morally, and for the outcome of that — which includes crimes that may qualify as genocide: the spilling of Iraqi blood, the destruction of Iraqi state institutions and historic and religious sites," a government statement read.
But that’s a vast overstatement of Saudi influence, said Reed at Foreign Reports: “Assad’s durability up to now only underscores how limited Saudi influence is,” he said. “Saudi influence in Iraq is modest also, contrary to what Maliki claims.”
While the Saudi authorities officially reject ISIL, criminalizing its citizens who join such groups abroad and targeting domestic supporters, ISIL’s funding stream is believed by many to reach into the wealthy elites of the kingdom and of some of its Gulf neighors, and there appear to have been divisions in Riyadh over the extent of the risk to Saudi interests posed by backing radical groups fighting Assad.
Writing in an op-ed for The New York Times, Steven Simon, a former member of Obama’s national security council, said states such as Saudi Arabia that “tacitly support the rebels as payback against Iran for its perceived takeover of Iraq will do nothing to support the rebels’ military campaign, for fear of creating an uncontrollable situation, even if their nationals privately fund the rebel army.”
The resulting carnage seems more likely to favor Iran, whose influence in Baghdad is much stronger, and on whom Maliki will be even more dependent in the face of ISIL’s challenge. That leaves Riyadh without many options.
“One of the interesting things is how little involved they are. They have a hard time finding local clients that aren’t really problematic,” Gause said regarding Riyadh's possible choices.
But Saudi concern over some of Washington’s recent moves to thaw relations with Tehran — including continuing efforts to reach a final agreement over Iran’s nuclear program — is likely to be confined to private displeasure, and tempered by the reality that Saudi Arabia still leans heavily on U.S. power in the region.
“They’re dependent on the U.S. for all sorts of reasons,” said Rutgers’ Jones. “If they flip the switch, and go back and pursue a more antagonistic line [with Iran], that’s not going to go down well in the U.S.”
“This is a balance-of-power game,” Jones continued. “They want to win the chessboard.” Given the options available in Iraq’s current situation, that will be a long strategic game.
Meanwhile, although Gause said it was not a fantasy that a regional thaw between Riyadh and Tehran might emerge from the flames of Iraq’s current violence, he thought the opposite scenario was more likely. “I see everyone running to their corners,” he said.
“...send the bombers in and...”
OMG... The RETURN of George S. Patton and Curtis LeMay!!!
You GO, brother!!! Haha!!!
“...Many Iraqis want to live in peace, screw the bloody holy war crap. They help us when we come in to help them. ...”
True that. The terrorist elements read their Mao and do the whole “fish hiding in a sea of fish” thing. Getting the people there to out the bad guys is the key.
The PROBLEM is, once they out them, and we leave, they’re still there, and will have to be dealt with. The key is training folks to be able to - and have the WILL power to - defend themselves from these animals.
“...Execute the guys you pick up off the field of battle. Quit playing by humane rules....”
Absolutely agree.
Not happening either. No POTUS is going to order the Nazi method of handling captured POWS , and they wont be nuking them either.
So since we have to live in the real world lets quit throwing our troops into these no-win situations.
Khent says: “Take off your pants, now.”
You too. Take off your pants.
RE execute:
If you catch a guy planting IEDs, sniping at our guys, actively engaged in combat against our people, he should not be treated to a taxpayer-funded vacation at Club Gitmo.
Don’t bother to take him prisoner. It isn’t “Nazi”, it’s common sense. How did our people deal with die-hard Japanese on Peleliu, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa? They killed them. With machine guns, flame throwers, grenades, and bayonets.
Kuribayashi had about 22,000 Japanese troops on Iwo; not many of them surrendered. Almost ALL of them (19,000) died at their guns. The ones that surrendered were, for the most part Korean conscripts or so badly shattered from the bombing that they were mental cases.
I agree with you on the “throwing troops into no-win situations”. But in the real world, if we HAVE to go in somewhere, we go in to win it and end it.
I NEVER want to see another airliner crashing into an American building, or a suicide bomber detonating on an American street.
Khent is not in a position to be giving orders to anyone...
Remember... the Broadway Show Tunes and Liza Minelli collection is on the line...
For some reason US POTUSs try to avoid going down in history with Hitler, Stalin and Po-Pot.
Call them RINOs if you like for that, its just reality.
It sounded like you were saying that our US soldiers should have executed the ones who surrendered w (hands up no weapons), versus killing those who fight to the end.
That would be very short sighted.
“...Call them RINOs if you like for that, its just reality...”
I wouldn’t call them RINOs. But I can’t see equating that with mass murderers of innocent civilians like Hitler, Stalin and Pol-Pot.
When you return people to the battlefield - especially high-rank commanders like O just did - there should be no surprise that they will re-commence offensive action against us.
But they can’t do that if they’re dead.
Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Candyland, Funkytown.
This is all worthless conjecture. Until THIS country is cleaned up, the rest is just babble.
Change begins at home and change at home is WAAAAAYYYYYY past it’s due date. Either split into two countries, one “red”, one “blue” peacefully or exterminate the enemy under the pretense of keeping a unified nation.
Until one or the other is done, the current “Amerika” ain’t doing sh*t.
Signing off from this thread.
“...It sounded like you were saying that our US soldiers should have executed the ones who surrendered w (hands up no weapons),...”
No, I said If you catch a guy planting IEDs, sniping at our guys, actively engaged in combat against our people, he should not be treated to a taxpayer-funded vacation at Club Gitmo. You waste him on the spot.
But - It DID happen in WWI and WWII as well. German machine gunners in BOTH wars were notorious for firing their weapon until it ran dry, killing our guys by the score, then throwing up their hands and yelling “KAMERADE!!!”. They were killed on the spot. Hell, I have a book about the PA 28th Infantry Division written in 1919 about combat in the Argonne, by soldiers who were there, and it says it was commonplace to just shoot those gunners outright, surrendering or not.
And in the Pacific in WWII, the Marines - my uncles included - didn’t try to take them prisoner unless they were ordered to for intelligence purposes. They KNEW that Bushido demanded that the Japanese kill himself rather than surrender. So they didn’t bother with formalities. That guy’s job was to kill as many Americans as he could, then die gloriously for Dai Nippon and the Emperor...
It’s difficult to say what one should or shouldn’t do, when we weren’t there. We can only speculate how we would react.
But as a personal policy... for me, it would matter a GREAT deal to me that my buddies and I would come home alive, rather than worrying about the other guy.
If his hands are in the air, and he so much as BLINKS the wrong way, well... too bad. Would you take the chance that he DOESN’T have a suicide belt on, or a grenade taped to his stomach under the shirt?
Patton had it right. Make the other dumb bastard die for his country, or ideology, or whatever.
Your proposal would accomplish a number of things.
1. You would kill all the enemy in that one city.
That’s the good part.
Here’s the bad part.
1. You would also kill the 90% plus of the population that wasn’t evil incarnate
2. You would only anger the rest of the population across the Middle-East
3. You would not intimidate them
4. There would be no surrender like Japan
5. The international community would trash the United States, even our friends would
6. The United States would be seen as a pariah as bad as the terrorists
7. Any future nuke set of on U. S. grounds would be seen as merely pay-back, not the crime that it was
8. Other nations would be free to use nukes if they felt like it
There’s no way I’m going to agree with you on this.
This is not a situation that could reap results like it did in Japan. It would only make things worse, like a thousand times worse.
When I said quit playing by humane rules, I was thinking if you’ve caught a guy red-handed with IEDs or sniping, take a moment to pause and kill the bastard.
I don’t want to see innocents killed. I just mean don’t feel obligated to treat terrorists by the rules of combat. They don’t operate by them.
The real world is this. We either send in our troops to face those terrorists on foreign soil, or we bring our troops here to fight them on our soil.
It’s your choice.
Do you want armed soldiers on our street corners? Do you want massive numbers of troops around on our city streets every single day?
Do you want combat operations taking place downtown Anytown, U. S. A.?
I sure as hell don’t. Quit carping about our troops being exposed to harm. That why they’re troops. Either they are exposed to harm or our populace here at home is, and the troops too as they fight a much harder batter on our own soil.
As for it being a NAZI action when we catch a guy planting an IED, and executing him, you’re sadly mistaken. As for catching a sniper and executing him, you’re sadly mistaken. As for catching a guy red handed who has done terrorist activity, you’re sadly mistaken.
These terrorists do not operate by internationally recognized rules of combat. We are not NAZIs if we execute them for their activity.
When you toss out the NAZI slander without justification, you sell NAZIism for less than it truly was. Don’t do that. Surely you must be able to see the difference between killing a terrorist caught red-handed, and rounding up and killing millions of Jews. Right?
I agree with you. I will admit to never reading exactly all the things that took place on Iwo Jima. My impression was that the Japanese there were killed under combat situations. I’m not aware of mass executions.
I don’t think you’re attempting to say mass executions were reasoned there.
With this in mind, I agree with your take on killing terrorists caught red-handed.
1. They aren’t playing by internationally recognized rules of engagement
2. It’s okay to kill someone who has proven themselves to be a terrorist
3. Do people realize that IEDs can’t tell if it’s a U. S. troop vehicle or a civilian vehicle?
Kill such people on the spot. Leave them there for their buddies to come scoop up.
SOL, you and I disagree from time to time, but I value your participation on the forum.
Catching a terrorist planting an IED on a road and executing him, is not Hitleristic, Stalinistic, or like the actions of Pol-Pot.
Please do not act as if these despicable men from history were only guilty of executing people who deserved to be executed.
Those five guys should have been executed. I agree whole-heartedly.
When you take actions like this, you become the enemy.
If someone has committed a crime, you bust them and make them pay. You can't simply round up and eliminate your enemies.
Perhaps I'm reading more into what you stated here. If so then it wasn't intentional.
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