On the 13th Anniversary of September 11, 2001, the US has committed itself, yet again, to war in Iraq. This war will be, like many others, undeclared. And like every single war we have fought in Iraq since I was born, we will be fighting it against former allies, who were armed and trained with American money. We will be doing so with the help of new allies, who we will be arming and training with American money in the hopes that they dont turn their (our) guns against us when the dust has settled on this new conflict. In Syria, anti-Assad rebels received direct funding and aid from the US in its now abandoned war against Bashar al-Assad. Many of those same rebels have become the backbone of ISISs military might. One of the rebel groups that benefited from our anti-Assad policies was an organization known as the al-Nusra Front, or Al-Qaeda in Syria. Many members of al-Nusra joined al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State over the summer, bringing their (American) money, (American) guns, and (al-Qaeda) training with them. But an official thawing of relations between al-Nusra and ISIS means that the US finds itself, for only the second time in as many years, fighting on the same side as al-Qaeda in Syria. With friends like these, we hardly need to be gallivanting around the world making new enemies. In Iraq, our war against Saddam Husseins government (which, according to some tallies, resulted in over 1 million deaths) empowered religious militants (in both Sunni and Shia camps) to fight to control the vacuum that we created by deposing Saddam, and decommissioning his military (sending young people with guns and military training, unemployed, into the newly liberated Iraq). In the aftermath of that foolish conflict, Americans were placed in the confusing position of being forced to pay off Sunni militants for their loyalty against the burgeoning insurgency, so that they would back the newly created American-backed, Shiite government that promptly gave them the cold shoulder once their patron, George W. Bush was out of office. Do we know how many of them are ISISs new victims, and how many of them are ISISs new gunmen? The answer is no, we dont. One million deaths later, can the US really claim that another US-backed war in Iraq is what this world needs? Our president has promised to create another vacuum in the political structure of both Iraq and Syria, by ridding the world of ISIS, a regional power that can in no way threaten the safety of the United States from across the ocean. But only 13 years ago, we were given a powerful message by a one-time self-proclaimed freedom fighter who received aid and comfort from the United States in his war against the then Russian backed government in Afghanistan. In all of this, one of the hardest things has been figuring out how many times we have been fighting alongside al-Qaeda, and how many times we have fought against it. One of the easiest things, however, is deciphering the message we received 13 years ago today: our meddling in the Muslim world is not making the world a safer place. And the ones who will pay for our governments egregious mistakes arent the Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, Cabinet officials, or decorated leaders of our armed forced. They will be the young and politically powerless members of our military, the innocent men, women, and children in Iraq and Syria, and, heaven forbid, innocent American citizens whose only crime was going to work one September morning. G-d help us all.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 16:17:50 +0000
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