Why Is Obama Bombing Iraq, Really?

By Juan Cole

This post originally ran on Juan Cole’s Web page.

Al-Zaman reports that a U.S. drone hit mortar emplacements and F-18s struck artillery arrays and armored vehicles deployed by the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) in Kuwair east of Mosul on the way to the Kurdistan capital of Irbil, and near a major dam, some areas of which are controlled by the IS fighters.

Also on Friday, the Naqshbandi Army denied any involvement in a push on the Kurdistan capital of Irbil, denouncing it as racist.  The Naqshbandi Sufi order is important in Mosul and was infiltrated and used by agents of Baathist high official Izzat al-Duri, a former vice president of Saddam Hussein.  The Naqshbandis are said to be nowadays having tensions with the so-called Islamic State, with which they allied to kick al-Maliki’s largely Shiite government out of Mosul.

Obama & Airstrikes to Protect Iraqi Kurds: 1991 Deja Vu all Over Again

By Juan Cole

Everett Collection / Shutterstock.com

This post originally ran on Juan Cole’s Web page.

During the Gulf War in early 1991, then-president George H. W. Bush called on Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party.

In the Kurdish north and in the Shiite South, hundreds of thousands heeded his call.  But after the short war was over in March, Bush appears to have completely lost interest in the Kurds and Shiites who rose up and now were in danger of being massacred by the Baath army.  Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf told the Iraqi military it could not fly armed helicopter gunships (as a way of protecting Iraqi crowds that had demonstrated).  The Iraqi officers said that they used the helicopter gunships as aerial ambulances, but that some were armed with rockets.  Could they please fly the armed helicopters?  Schwarzkopf said that he was too tired to argue, and said “OK.”