{"id":771,"date":"2014-06-19T03:28:51","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T03:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/?p=771"},"modified":"2014-06-20T03:40:38","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T03:40:38","slug":"771","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/?p=771","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018Pharaoh\u2019 is laughing: all hell is breaking loose"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bush\u2019s neo-cons believed that America could now do just as it pleased. And however Washington chose to intervene anywhere around the world, invasion included, it would be for the latter\u2019s own good. How times have changed!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

(Daily Times, 19 June 2014)<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u2018Pharaoh\u2019 is having the last laugh. I mean, Hosni Mubarak, the disgraced former president of Egypt. He has a lot to laugh about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nominally in detention, he actually now lives in comfortable retirement in a military hospital, well looked after by the many field marshals and generals whom he promoted and patronized over three decades and who now control Egypt. And those who brought about his downfall languish in jail, Islamist and secular alike.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And then there is the issue of Iraq too. When President George Bush was bracing to invade Iraq, Mubarak had publicly warned against it, saying that if Iraq was invaded, \u201call hell will break loose\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, the old man, whom many called the Pharaoh, was right.\u00a0 <\/span>Yours truly was among those who were wrong on this issue, but of that at another time. Mubarak had opposed the invasion not out of sympathy for the people of Iraq or Saddam Hussain, nor even as a friend of America. But knowing the Middle East well, he feared for the long-term consequences of a Western invasion.<\/span><\/p>\n

All hell has indeed broken loose in Iraq. What is happening in Iraq now is closer to fiction than fact. The Al-Qaeda offshoot, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which seeks to create an Islamic caliphate straddling both Iraq and Syria, has suddenly gained a large swathe of territory north of Baghdad with a speed that matches, even surpasses, the sweep of the American army against Saddam\u2019s\u00a0forces.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Iraqi government forces, 270,000-strong, equipped by the Americans with over 300 tanks, close to 4,000 Armored Fighting Vehicles, 49 Self Propelled Guns,\u00a0Apache helicopters and much more, couldn\u2019t stop a ragtag force of a couple of thousand Jihadis with black banners from seizing Mosul, the second largest city. Thirty thousand Iraqi troops fled the city leaving behind large stockpiles of arms, some shedding their uniforms as they ran!<\/span><\/p>\n

What the hell is going on? For a start, ISIS is an inspired, fearless and battle-hardened military force. Its fighters are operating in Sunni territory, whose inhabitants view them as liberators, in spite of their extremism and religious fanaticism, because Sunnis have been effectively disenfranchised by the Shi\u2019a-led government of prime minister, Nouri Al-Maliki.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Recall that the senior-most Sunni member of the Iraqi government, Vice President Tariq Al-Hashimi, fled\u00a0Baghdad in 2012 after being accused of murder. He was later sentenced to death in absentia. Maliki is now in the 9th year of his unfolding \u201creign\u201d and looks poised for many more.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Iraqi army is a force divided against itself. The Shi\u2019a personnel (mostly from the south) based in Sunni areas feel isolated and threatened, while the Sunni officers and men feel alienated from the government.<\/span><\/p>\n

The invasion of Iraq must rank as the most stupid military adventure that any major power has launched anywhere in modern history. Quite apart from the fact that it was based on a fib, that of Saddam\u2019s alleged weapons of mass destruction, it has had the result of turning America\u2019s enemy\u2019s enemy into its enemy\u2019s friend (turning Iraq, a long-time enemy and counterweight to Iran, into its ally). It also transformed a secular, stable, if dictatorial, Middle Eastern country into a volatile, unstable and quasi-theocratic state.<\/span><\/p>\n

And at what cost to America? Nearly five thousand US troops killed, 32,223 wounded, and billions of dollars down the drain.\u00a0 <\/span>How many billions exactly?\u00a0 <\/span>We will never know, but a Brown University report estimates the total cost to date of the Iraq War as being close to $1 trillion, with the Department of Defense’s direct spending on Iraq totaling at least $757.8 billion. <\/span><\/p>\n

And we will now have the bizarre spectacle of the US joining Iran in strengthening the Al Maliki regime against the ISIS threat, while trying to bring down Iran\u2019s Syrian ally, President Bashar Al-Assad, a goal Washington shares with ISIS. At the same time, the US remains totally committed to nuclear-armed Israel to prevent Iran from ever reaching military parity with Israel. Too complicated? Yes. Makes sense? No. <\/span><\/p>\n

Many in the West jumped up and down with triumphalism after the implosion of the Soviet Union. Francis Fukuyama even declared the \u201cend of history,\u201d whatever that meant. Bush\u2019s neo-cons believed that America could now do just as it pleased. And however Washington chose to intervene anywhere around the world, invasion included, it would be for the latter\u2019s own good!<\/span><\/p>\n

Stalin once said about President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia that he would only have to lift his little finger and Tito would be no more.\u00a0 <\/span>Tito ruled long enough to see Stalin denounced in his own country. In the manner of Stalin, the American neo-cons believed that in this \u201cpost-history\u201d era, all America had to do was to inflict \u201cshock and awe\u201d on another country with its stealth bombers and cruise missiles for that country to do its bidding and transform itself in America\u2019s image. Saddam is probably rolling in his grave from laughter.<\/span><\/p>\n

To his credit, Barack Obama is more realistic and has a better sense of history. Remember the fine speeches the American president gave to cheering Muslim university students in Cairo, Jakarta and Istanbul early in his presidency? If only speeches, interspersed with Islamic greetings, sufficed!\u00a0 <\/span>They don\u2019t.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As I write, America\u2019s \u201ceternal ally\u201d Israel has let its troops run amok in the occupied West Bank because three young Israelis have not returned home from a hike. They have arrested hundreds of Palestinians, including the speaker of parliament.<\/span><\/p>\n

Robert Fisk, a well-known writer on the Middle East now based in Lebanon, thinks that the recent events in both Syria and Iraq threaten the political map of the Middle East drawn by European powers.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He quotes Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader, as telling him that \u201cSykes-Picot is dead\u201d. The reference is to Mark Sykes, British traveler and politician, and Fran\u00e7ois Picot, a French diplomat, who sliced and carved ancient lands, obliterated and redrew timeless frontiers, and cut and slashed age-old trade routes in the Middle East to suit the economic and political interests of the Anglo-French colonial powers after the First World War.<\/span><\/p>\n

How times have changed! All hell is breaking loose.<\/span><\/p>\n

by Razi Azmi<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bush\u2019s neo-cons believed that America could now do just as it pleased. And however Washington chose to intervene anywhere around the world, invasion included, it would be for the latter\u2019s own good. How times have changed!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":773,"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions\/773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}