'..Far more important would be agreement between the regional powers, including Turkey and Iran, on a settlement to allow Iraq to escape from its existential crisis.
Selective humanitarian intervention without UN and regional authorisation is simply a tool of power politics, not solidarity. To imagine that the solution to the disastrous legacy of one intervention is to launch yet another is delusional folly.'<blockquote>'The victims of this sectarian onslaught need urgent humanitarian aid and refuge. But the idea that the states that invaded and largely destroyed Iraq at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives should claim the cause of humanitarianism for yet another military intervention in Iraq beggars belief.
If the aim were solely to provide air cover for the evacuation of Yazidis from Sinjar, there are several regional powers that could deliver it. The Iraqi government itself could be given the means to do the job – something its US sponsors have denied it until now. In fact, the force that has done most so far to rescue Yazidis has been the Kurdish PKK, regarded as a terrorist organisation by the US, EU and Turkey.
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The danger of the US, Britain and others being drawn again into the morass of a disintegrating state they themselves took apart is obvious. IS, then known as al-Qaida in Iraq, itself effectively arrived in the country in 2003 on the backs of US and British tanks.
..
The majority of Iraq’s million-strong Christian community was in fact forced out of the country under US-British occupation. The state sectarianism that triggered the Sunni revolt and rise of IS in Iraq – the ultimate blowback – was built into the political structures set up by George Bush.
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..another round of US and British military intervention would only strengthen IS and boost its credibility – as well as increase the risk of terror attacks at home. The likelihood is that it can only be overcome by a functioning state in both Iraq and Syria. That in turn demands a decisive break with the sectarian and ethnic politics bequeathed by a decade of war and intervention.
The urge to play the role of self-appointed global policeman retains its grip on the western world, but experience shows that will do nothing to rescue the people of Iraq. Far more important would be agreement between the regional powers, including Turkey and Iran, on a settlement to allow Iraq to escape from its existential crisis.
Selective humanitarian intervention without UN and regional authorisation is simply a tool of power politics, not solidarity. To imagine that the solution to the disastrous legacy of one intervention is to launch yet another is delusional folly.'
- Seumas Milne,
Another war in Iraq won’t fix the disaster of the last, August 13, 2014</blockquote>
Context<blockquote>
'..Are Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld any less of war criminals than Hussein?'(2003 - 2033) - A Thirty Years' War in the Middle East'..we should find a new way of understanding what happened between 1914 and 1918.'(1914 - 2014) - '..the Middle East .. 100 years after that fateful summer in 1914.'</blockquote>