You hear a lot about America’s conflicting interests that come back and bite us in the ass years later. It’s pretty much common knowledge that the US has a severe problem interfering in any and every entanglement in the world and often starting fresh ones to serve our own interests. I do believe that our involvement is usually well intended, but the outcome is never what we want/expect. It amazes me that our great country hasn’t yet learned the law of unintended consequences. A couple of examples: We helped put Saddam Hussein in power by supporting a military coup in Iraq that gave the government to the Ba’athists. Some say we helped create the monster that spent years in a pointless war with Iran, Invaded Kuwait and caused the Gulf War, and ultimately put us where we are today, mired in violence in Iraq.
Another example would be arming the Taliban against the Russians, which created another monster that we had to deal with later. (see: war in Afghanistan)
This article makes it clear we not only haven’t learned our lesson, but are compounding our mistakes in real time so that instead of waiting a decade to find out we supported the bad guys, we just support everybody.
The meat:
So. To keep score. The United States is supporting: the Shia government, which funnels money and arms to Shia militias, death squads, and insurgent/terrorist groups; the Sunni opposition, which funnels money and arms to the Sunni insurgency; the Sunni insurgency directly, so that they will combat the Shia militias as well as al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group of Sunni terrorists supposedly supported by Shia Iran; the Saudis, who fund Sunni insurgents as well–almost surely–as Sunni terrorist groups; the Iraqi Kurds, who have their sights set on an independent nation that includes a de-Arabized Kirkuk; and the Turks, who have their sights set on never, ever seeing an independent Kurdish entity anywhere, anyhow, anyway, ever, amen.
Can anyone say blowback?
On top of that, I’ve heard that a third of the weapons we have given the Iraqi security forces have disappeared, which likely means they fell into the hands of the insurgents.
I can’t say any more. This just pisses me off.