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? 

A Tale of Two Kurdistans

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times - in Kurdistan Region of Iraq.  In January 2006 National Geographic Magazine did what I thought was a gritty piece ( Link ) on Northern Iraq.  It was so stinging in its timbre that the first time I read it I thought in the back of my mind it is a bit out of character for that magazine.  In a nutshell they said, Kurdistan of Iraq in Northern Iraq is happy it is realizing more and more autonomy and peace compared to the South of Iraq.  They also hammered home that the Kurds like America.  No hard feelings toward us for once being cozy with Saddam.  They themselves had a few arrangements with the devil too.  But, though National Geographic writer and journalist Frank Viviano drove home that although there are activities of growth, security, unity, and governance, Kurdistan of Northern Iraq has been and still could be a powder keg.  They have fought a civil war amongst themselves,  they are at war with the Turks (a well kept dirty little secret), and the Kurds want Mosel and Kirkuk to be Kurdish cities again.  A gigantic oil field sits under Kirkuk.  

   The Kurds fly their own flag, they have their own government, they boast a loyal 175,000 man army.  Baghdad, Washington, and Turkey call it a militia.  While in Iraq last year I have seen their Kurdish Pesmerga Armyand it is not a militia in Hawaiian shirts and sandals with AK-47 rifles.  Rather, it is a lean, mean fighting machine.  They walk amongst the people.  They are in the food shops, the markets, the barber shops, and they sit in the cafés - locked and loaded with cigarettes in mouth and AK-47s on shoulders chatting with the folk.  They have the Kurdish flag on their often well-tailored uniforms.  They have ubiquitous checkpoints.  They are ubiquitous.  They tolerate us only to a point.  Having been in a combat trained unit in the U.S. Army myself I know fighting them would be a daunting task.

Then came CBS and 60-Minutes.  They aired a 12 minute piece ( Link ) on Kurdistan of Iraq on February 18.  Bob Simmon (captured by the Iraqis in the first Gulf War) went about with a bemused look on his face.  He interviewed the Prime Minister of Northern Iraq and then interviewed a Kurd living in Northern Iraq who grew up in America.  Simmon seemed oblivious to the Third-World optimism the two Kurds dished up to him.  They are proud of their region and treat it as an independent nation.  They want us to believe in them and their region.  They often however, find wealth in optimism alone.

But, having been there myself I realize the Kurds are gigantic optimists.  And, bad news stalls investment money.  Simmon and crew headed out, slapped their hands together, and called Kurdistan of Northern Iraq a victory.  That is rather unlike the historically pesky 60-Minutes style.  And unlike National Geographic and me, 60-Minutes apparently did not wander into the gray area between Kurdistan and Iraq proper.  Or, if they did they did not mention it.  The dynamic border changes daily.  The Middle World between the two Iraq's is Orwellian at best.  An American can be disappeared there.  

There, in the frontier between North, South, Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran, militias do wander amongst the Kurds and Iraqis.  The very East of Kurdish Iraq is fraught with Islamists.  The border with Iran is porous.  There is a loose agreement between all the parties - the Western Kurds, the Turks, the Eastern Kurds, the Iranians, and the Kurdish Islamists.   In Halabja (sight of the 1988 gassing of thousand of Kurds) a mile or so from Iran,  I never felt safe and was detained for a half hour at a check point with militia soldiers from I no not which group.  A doctor in my vehicle talked them into letting me continue my journey.  

I should be glad 60-Minutes sent a crew to that important part of the world at all I suppose.  They seemed to be satisfied with comments from the elitist class and called it a day.  No mention that if one travels there one must be very, very careful.  The Kurds and 60-minutes leave the viewer believing perhaps that it is as safe as Norway.  This notion is patently unrealistic. There is little electricity, no reliable banking for the average guy, no maps, transportation is handled by the mafia, bad guys just disappear if caught, and communication between all the Kurdish factions are precarious at best.  

But, I am much more glad National Geographic saw fit to wander amongst the people in the dangerous fringes.  Something I did too.  There in the fringes of Kurdistan, among the average people, lies the key to if our glass is half full or half empty in Iraq.  "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."  

This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Mathew Schram, a major in the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. He was killed on May 26, 2003 about 100 miles northwest of Baghdad in Haditha, Iraq.  His resupply mission convoy came under attack from gunmen who opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.  The Brookfield native was 36.  He was in ROTC while at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater before joining the Army in 1989 and participating in the first Gulf War 12 years prior. 

3,311 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003. 

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