Editoria:

In Godfather III there is a famous quote from the character Michael Corleone, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” This is how it feels with the situation in Iraq where the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) have taken over most of the so-called Sunni Triangle. ISIS has also taken over Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq with almost two million people. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has asked the United States for the assistance of US air power in seeking to halt the ISIS advance. Just when we thought we were done fighting and losing lives in Iraq, we are being pulled back in!

The war in Iraq was a war that never should have been! There were no weapons of mass destruction and it was not a hotbed of terrorist groups. As these truths became known, after the propaganda out of Washington and President Bush was debunked, the rationale for the war changed to one of establishing Democracy in the state, or as the politicians liked to say, the planting of the seeds of Democracy.

A total of 4,486 U.S. service members were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2012 planting those seeds of Democracy, along with the billions of dollars used as fertilizer (metaphorical speaking). Iraqi death estimates are well over 100,000. President Bush propped up his choice for Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who has not been able to provide stability or security for the country.

Now ISIS is quickly taking over major cities in Iraq, easily overtaking the US trained Iraqi security forces, which number in the hundreds of thousands of men. A few thousand lightly-armed al-Qaeda-linked ISIS fighters are dominating the region.

Maliki, who in the past has been defiant about American troop presence in Iraq, is now asking for support with US air strikes. American war hawks in Congress, who pushed the US towards the war in Iraq in 2002, are once again beating the drums for intervention in Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Senator John McCain seem particularly eager to deploy a US military solution to this crisis, rather than a diplomatic effort.

There is an old saying ‘fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.’ We were fooled once. Let us not be fooled twice. The great Democracy effort failed in Iraq and unless we are talking about a humanitarian effort, we should stay out of Iraq.

We should take the same attitude and action that the US government takes with the African nations which have experienced coups, terrorism, torture, and mass killings and we limit ourselves to economic sanctions and humanitarian aid in the form of food staples and medicine.

Then again the African nations do not sit on one of the greatest fossil fuel reserves on the planet!