Iraq III - The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria - Dragged into a war ensemble we insisted we would not play

Events moved fast over the last couple months in Iraq and the Middle East.  The Israelis are a war again in Gaza; an American journalist is beheaded in Syria, a capstone to their two-year civil war; the same be-headers of the aforementioned journalist have taken over a third of Iraq to compliment their already occupation of a third of Syria; President Obama sends a contingent of troops to Iraq; President Obama orders the fighter jets to rain hell on the bad guys; as, said bad guys kill everybody and anybody.  

I was asked to be on the radio the other day; now twice.  I was in Iraq in 2006 and again in 2008 as an independent journalist.  I never felt safe.  A guy like me could be sent right up the kidnap network, sold to one bad-guy group after another.  Anyway, 1380 AM out of Monroe and Janesville, Wisconsin, asked me to pontificate on my experience over there.  I was interviewed on Thursday the 14 of August and again on Monday the 18th.  No one wanted to here my Iraq shtick for six years, until just recently as Iraq goes up in flames.  Media is fickle; a subject for another post on another day.  

So..., we are back in Iraq for round three.  President Obama inherited Iraq and finally got all the American troops out of there at the end of 2011.  It was a short-lived hiatus.  The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) rose out of the ashes of the Syrian Civil War, fragments of Al Qaeda, and marginalized Sunnis from Saddam Hussein's era. They are as bad a rabble of guys as Pol Pot was in the Cambodia Killing Fields in the '70s and '80s in the aftermath of our Vietnam War. 

For all ostensive purposes we have been in or near Iraq since 1990 and the first Gulf War. We have never left Kuwait and Turkey. Before that our navy guarded ships in the Persian Gulf during the Iraq-Iraq war of the 1980s. After the first Gulf War we guarded the Kurdish region of Iraq from their own leader Saddam Hussein by allowing no flights over the region.  So..., like the American Vietnam War era, we have been in Iraq or its vicinity for 25 years. Trillions and trillions of dollars, thousands of American deaths. 

Poetically, I was operating in the same area of Iraq that has caught so much news in the last few weeks.  I visited the Yazidi people and their temple in Lalish, Iraq.  The temple is in the mountains near Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, and under ISIS control. The Yazidi are an ancient peoples that are pre-Christian and Islam.  And like they did with the Christians in Mosul, the ISIS bunch went after the Yazidi with a vengeance tagging them, "heathens."  The Yazidi are a peaceful ethnic group within the Kurdish people, a persecuted ethic group in their own right.  I always new I was safe in Iraq when I saw the conical roofs which are a signature of Yazidi architecture. 

It looks like we intervened at the very last minute to stop some of the destruction going on in northern Iraq. The autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq has its own army, the tough Pesmerga.  They kept me safe in Iraq. They are basically a uniformed army in pickup trucks.  They have had to fight ISIS forces who stole our old military equipment from the failed Iraqi Army they overran with ease. 

The Kurds, along with Israel, are our only friends in the Middle East.  The former being Sunni Muslim and the later being Jewish. Unlikely bedfellows arrive in war.  We are also now in the uncomfortable position of having to ally with Iran and Syria, two countries we have been at quasi war with for decades, to fight ISIS. This ISIS bunch is so violent they sour Al Qaeda, Syria, and Iran and ISIS has no compunction about destroying any one of them. 

We are going to need a lot of luck.  Nowadays we fund our country with taxes from a population of beleaguered workers whose incomes and futures are far bleaker then the generation prior. As my neighbors in Janesville, Wisconsin, move out of their houses due to unemployment and the misery that comes with it, 

America is mired in a non-benefit, part-time job economy inspired in some part by spending trillions of dollars on two perennial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Coupled with jobs hemorrhaging to China and  and corporate offices fleeing to the third world for two decades, draining tax coffers...,, is American "even" capable of funding the fighting of a third war in Iraq? 

Vietraq..., Iraqnam..., banal service economy Janesville, Wisconsin, finds little relevance

8 July 2014

So Iraq is in flames this summer of 2014.  According to the the many news outlets, a "bunch" representing an off-shoot of Al Qaeda has taken over a third of Iraq.  If you believe our government, America has sent 300 military personnel back to Iraq to shore up the floundering Iraqi government and to protect our billion dollar embassy there.

Did I say that right? Just 300 military personnel?

Iraq III goes out with a whimper? Probably not at least for the 300 American military souls assigned the task of fixing it. 

I don't know if I am qualified to pass judgement, but Iraq is the size of California.  So we send 300 people to sort it all out?  A country of Iraq by the way, it took 250,000 military personnel in the first war in '90-'91, and 175,000 military personnel in the second war '30-'11, to only marginally control. 

And what of the trillions of dollars we have spent there since 1990? That's right, 1990. Has everyone forgotten the "first, Gulf War?"   I am thinking that several trillion dollars could have provided state-of-the-art health care for every American for 20 years.  

While people here in banal Janesville, Wisconsin, struggle to makes ends meet, still in the throes of "The Great Recession," they can pop on the boob-tube and watch former American and Iraqi Army equipment and weapons captured by and being used by the bad guys, the ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), to facilitate the deconstruction of current Iraq.  While eating chips and dip in front of Satellite TV, the peeps can watch the carnage in Iraq and distract themselves from an America slipping into Second World Status (a poor police state country with nukes).  They languish with daily budgets like paying for..., health care.

These aforementioned Janesvillians do their toils as their state of Wisconsin, under the tutelage of an arguably inept Governor, slumps into a Great Depression rubric, but with cell phones, Internet, and dish tv.  The said Gov is convinced he is Presidential material. Looking back now, maybe he is. 

And looking back then, always a perilous activity, what of the perps that facilitated the many wars in Iraq. Father George H.W. Bush, American President during the first Gulf War jumps out of air planes in his 90s.  George W. Bush, the son, American President during the U.S.'s second war over there, paints pictures of world leaders while he is bunkered in his fancy house in Dallas, Texas.  For six years Barak Obama, the organizer, and the American President who inherited, "Iraq," fretted about health care and finally declared, "If you ain't got it, we will penalize you."  He pulls all Americans out of Iraq.  The "pugnacious" and 1960s Military Draft-dodging Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense in the First Gulf War, and Vice President during the Iraq War levies criticisms of Obama, as said Dick enjoys his new heart.  He's got some health care from somewhere.

And, the peeps? Did I mention the peeps? Working in an entrenched service economy America, and languishing with the simplest personal budgets.

New information added in the last paragraph (a basic composition class no-no) :

How convenient it has been to forget the American Vietnam War and all its hell done to our economy, our Veterans, our nation, and to the people of Vietnam.  I remember the news on the aforementioned boob-tubes in 1975 showing the bad guys overwhelming the country we had just spent over 20 years dumping billions of dollars into..., and soon after the communists took the country, America slipped into the "Misery Recession" of the late '70s and early '80s. Many of the Cold War American military families had to go on Food Stamps.

The end of Iraq is eerily like the..., end of our Vietnam War..., trillions of $ down the dumper; thousands of Americans, Vietnamese, and Iraqis dead and wounded from both wars. Lives ruined for ever.  We learned nothing as a nation.  

We "learn" nothing as a nation. 

Vietraq...., Iraqnam..., surely it's just my imagination run a muck...,

...,banal service economy Janesville, Wisconsin, finds no correlation. 

We Languish on in Iraq

The word has been handed down that United States military Iraq tours of duty will be lengthened from 12 months to 15 months.  I was never shot at in my three years in the U.S. Army stationed up around the Czechoslovakian border.  I do however know what it is like to spend two Thanksgivings; two Christmases; and, three Forth of Julys in a foreign country that I never trusted really had my best interest at the top of their list. 

Having been in the Army in 1975 when Saigon and South Vietnam collapsed, I got a balcony seat in watching a war effort by the United States totally and finally implode.  The failure manifested itself in a united, communist Vietnam, (just the opposite of what we wanted) and the exodus of thousands and thousands of Vietnamese and Hmong to the four corners of the World.  Most notable to us, is Little Saigon in Los Angles, California.  Lets not even dwell on Cambodia in today's blog.

The point being here that prior to the implosion of our "project" in Vietnam, the Army played with tours of duty, deferment eligibilities, and enlistment eligibility requirements.  Now, like then, they are juggling logistics with soldiers lives.  And,  each election year since the Vietnam War ended we argue about who did what and if we won the war or not.  I have been to Vietnam three times since the war and Iraq once during this war.  Let me assure everyone Vietnam is still communist and Iraq is still splintered. 

What is today's blog about?  One isolated policy change with the Army, or....perhaps it is something about noticing things that seem all too familiar that as I remember - from a balcony seat - did not turn out so well. 

Each day no matter what big-media idiot has foisted themselves into the news with some alleged compelling deed, or what dead rich entertainer we are instructed by the big-media to feel compassion for, Cool Dadio Media will note the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq.  As well, once a week,  Cool Dadio Media will take a second of time and a line or two and mention one of Wisconsin's soldiers who has given the ultimate price to society.

This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Kirk Straseskie of Beaver Dam, and a sergeant with the B Company Marines.  He died while participating in the rescue of the crew of a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter that crashed in a canal near Hilla, Iraq, on May 19, 2003.  Kirk was 23 years old.  

   3,294 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

   71 Wisconsin Soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003. 

   Parting thoughts - Sorry to see Kurt Vonnegut passed away.  Here's to Player Piano and Dr. Proteus.