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Petraeus: “This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias”

Jun 20, 2014 9:15 am By Robert Spencer

PetraeusPetraeus said: “This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias, or a Shia on Sunni Arab fight.” He is half-right. If the U.S. did intervene, it would indeed be acting as the air force for Shia militias, and for the weak Shia regime in Baghdad. However, the conflict in Iraq is already a Shia on Sunni Arab fight. And nothing the United States can do is going to change that.

“Petraeus: U.S. Must Not Become the Shia Militia’s Air Force,” by Nico Hines, The Daily Beast, June 18, 2014:

LONDON, England — David Petraeus, the former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, has issued a stark warning to those advocating U.S. military intervention against ISIS militias bearing down on Baghdad.

The architect of the successful “surge” strategy that helped to quell the last great outbreak of sectarian violence in Iraq almost a decade ago said there was a great risk that the U.S. would be seen as picking sides in a religious battle that has been waged for generations.

The former head of the CIA and one of the most highly respected generals in modern U.S. warfare said it was only wise to offer military support if the political conditions were exactly right in Iraq, a scenario that is virtually impossible to imagine in the near-future. “This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias, or a Shia on Sunni Arab fight,” he said.

Petraeus said the only way the U.S. could intervene without further destabilizing Iraq would be if the Shia-led government in Baghdad was seen as fair and representative throughout Iraq.

“If America is to support then it would be in support of a government against extremists rather than one side of what could be a sectarian civil war,” he said at the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty in London. “It has to be a fight of all of Iraq against extremists, who happen to be Sunni Arabs, but extremists that are wreaking havoc on a country.”…

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Filed Under: Iraq, Sunni-Shi'ite Jihad, United States Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. Jay Boo says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 9:39 am

    Whenever Obama’s (moderate) Sunni jihadi ‘s go on the offensive the White House and NPR criticize the government under attack as being the issue.

  2. jihad3tracker says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 9:45 am

    Yesterday Obama’s remarks about the crisis ( and of course it is, but a totally predictable one due to al-Maliki’s exclusion of Sunnis from regime power and positions ) included at least two “musts”.

    Al-Maliki “must ….. ” in other words. Well, common sense tells us that if he has not done the Sunni inclusion foxtrot by now, the only way to get them into governance is by getting rid of al-Maliki.

    I thing a 12 year old could reason that out…

    • Betty says

      Jun 21, 2014 at 9:59 pm

      all of this is obama fault. sense he got in office the hole world just about has been fighting. because he can’t keep his lying mouth shut. he keeps stirring the pot but it will sill boil over giving time. and that is what we have to look forward to.

  3. Donald Klein says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 9:47 am

    Too bad the general neglected to issue a similar “stark warning” to the erstwhile secretary of defense he served under, regarding the suicidal rules of engagement he presumably agreed to impose on his soldiers; according to history, “most” is a contextual superlative that George S. Patton etalia may not have agreed with.

  4. John C. Barile says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 9:57 am

    We must help the Kurdistan Regional Government; it’s the only viable island of stability and relative tolerance on the scene there. And yet this is precisely what Mr. Obama would never likely do, for fear of offending Turkey and Iran.

    • John C. Barile says

      Jun 20, 2014 at 10:02 am

      Kurds and Turkomen aren’t Shia, it’s worth noting. Nor is the refugee Christian population. Speaking of this crisis as merely an ongoing episode of Sunni-Shia sectarian strife overlooks this point.

      • Peter Buckley says

        Jun 20, 2014 at 10:20 am

        Another sensible article:

        “The United States can afford a cutoff of Middle Eastern oil. In fact, if it resulted in the return of Qatar and Saudi Arabia to sand dunes, perhaps so much the better – given that they have been the source of much of the funding of Sunni jihadists, until the jihadist groups figured out how to steal large sums themselves (including perhaps $1.5 billion in Mosul). The oil cutoff would devastate some countries and inconvenience others, but the United States is in a position not only better to weather the storm, but to profit.”

        http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4371/sunni-shiite-war

        • eib says

          Jun 20, 2014 at 12:58 pm

          Quote:
          The oil cutoff would devastate some countries and inconvenience others, but the United States is in a position not only better to weather the storm, but to profit.”
          end

          Then we damn well should.

      • jihad3tracker says

        Jun 20, 2014 at 10:32 am

        John — Permit me to take a shortcut over to you, instead of lengthy searches for facts about the Kurds — of course Mr. Spencer & other JW contributors are welcome to jump in also :

        1. What is the Kurdish population ( numbers of civilians ) that would benefit from a truly stable solution ?

        2. How does that compare with the number of the Sunni population benefitting from the Sunnis prevailing ?

        3. Is there any history of the Kurdistan Regional Government being effective with the others ( Sunni / Shia ) working out agreements about borders and avoiding armed hostilies ?

        I realize that complete replies might take in lots of conduct of decades, but maybe someone here can give me an overall idea.

        • John C. Barile says

          Jun 20, 2014 at 10:44 am

          I only mean to say that it is in the West’s interests to help the Kurds hold their own in this present crisis.

      • Alarmed Pig Farmer says

        Jun 20, 2014 at 2:50 pm

        That Kurds are predominately Sunni is an odd outcome for the descendants of tribes that migrated out of Persia. But things moved fast when the Holy Islam exploded northward out of western Arabia in the late 7th century.

        ***

        The former head of the CIA and one of the most highly respected generals in modern U.S. warfare said it was only wise to offer military support if the political conditions were exactly right…

        He’s highly respected because he launched an expensive policy that caused the Shia to take over while at the same time rearming the Sunni there. The surge didn’t succeed, unless you’re talking about helping fix the next U.S. election, which is to say that the splurge did indeed succeed.

        Petraeus gets no respect from the trailer of this Other White Meat Agrarian.

      • Alarmed Pig Farmer says

        Jun 20, 2014 at 3:17 pm

        A small percentage of Kurds are Shia. I don’t know if they get the treatment from their Sunni betters up there.

  5. mariam rove says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 11:21 am

    He is so true on this. M

  6. Jack Diamond says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 11:43 am

    Jihadist groups always get written about as if they are rogue bands of roving, self-contained, stateless, homicidal maniacs (woefully misinterpreting the Qur’an) when they are always well-funded, well-armed proxies for Islamic States. These “Machiavellian” (Mohammedan) games the U.S. is incapable of keeping up with and shouldn’t try (“a fool lies here who tried to hustle the East”). The incredibly costly misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, ultimately ending in failure, should have taught something. “Shi’a militias” means Iran just as surely as “Sunni extremists” signify Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar… and Iran too (which has a long history of collaborating with Sunni jihadis). Iraq is being carved up the way Syria has been (Assad has 40% of the country he used to have). Sunni-Shi’a Islamic cannibalism isn’t pretty but it is preferable to the alternative (the Iran-Iraq war killed off a generation of Iranian Islamic revolutionaries who would have been otherwise employed), nor is there any preventing it if we wanted to. It’s the Islam, stupid.

    • voegelinian says

      Jun 22, 2014 at 11:30 am

      “Jihadist groups always get written about as if they are rogue bands of roving, self-contained, stateless, homicidal maniacs (woefully misinterpreting the Qur’an) when they are always well-funded, well-armed proxies for Islamic States. ”

      Yep. It’s always been this way. The Barbary Pirates were a sprawling, centuries-long proxy jihad by the Ottomans (which doesn’t rule out internecine splintering now and then amongst the Muslims of the time). The suicidal knife-wielding maniacs of the Insulinde (Indonesian and Philippines archipelagos) were proxies of the larger Malay Sultanate, and ceased when the Spanish bombarded the Sultan’s seaside palace with cannons.

      But we in the West (and many still in the Counter-Jihad) have this anxious need to leap on superficial indicators to assuage us with distracting details that seem to indicate that Islam is not a systemic monolith and that the Umma is not united in deadly fanaticism

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      Jun 29, 2014 at 5:13 am

      Excellent point.

      A couple of cartoons by a very astute Israeli Jew, making essentially the same point.

      http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/world-war-3.html

      a world war is going on , but it is disguised as 1000 local conflicts

      http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/philosophical-questions.html
      if islamists are fighting on every continent
      but nobody is willing to see it
      is there a world war going on?
      or not?

      The thing that everyone has to remember is this: that *all* Muslims, or as many as possible, no matter from where, are supposed to go on Hajj at least once in their life. And I’ll *bet* that when they go on hajj to Islam Central they get their marching orders. For wherever.

      Whoever’s gone on hajj brings the news and the orders back to the mosque or mosques. And so it goes.

      The mosques are where it’s at. The nerve centres. That’s what C S Hurgronje taught the Dutch (and Hurgronje managed to pull off an undercover trip to Mecca, so he knew what went on there).

      Oh they use internet, these days, but I’ll bet the focus is still the mosque.

  7. Buraq says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 12:29 pm

    crISIS? What crISIS?

    Clowns!

  8. Walter Sieruk says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 1:33 pm

    It seems that Petaeus does have a good point. That it would be foolish to let the shia militias use the power of US airforce in air strikes against their enemy.
    As the ancient saying from the Far -East states “Nothing is so bad that action will not make it worse.”

    • Charlie Griffith says

      Jun 21, 2014 at 11:12 am

      Well said.

      Our problem, always our “American Problem” since 1917, is that in that eye-blink of time after the need for our desperately sought support passes, we hear “Yanks go home”…..but, but….please continue to send us bales upon bales of your Dollars.

      Now Maliki and Karzai are merely following suit.

      We should let these Muslim factions eat each other. We should’ve pulled out immediately we witnessed Saddam swinging at the end of that rope. Damn any vacuum. We could stay there for a century more and there still would be a vacuum when we pulled out.

      Now, uh oh……those stockpiles of what remains of Saddam’s WMD’s are now much sought after by the Muslim sect du jour. Remember back when th’ media were chortling and snorting that “No WMD’s were found”?

      • Charlie Griffith says

        Jun 21, 2014 at 11:15 am

        Uh, oh! …duplicate post nearby….apologies. Evil keyboard.

    • Charlie Griffith says

      Jun 21, 2014 at 11:12 am

      Well said.

      Our problem, always our “American Problem” since 1917, is that in that eye-blink of time after the need for our desperately sought support passes, we hear “Yanks go home”…..but, but….please continue to send us bales upon bales of your Dollars.

      Now Maliki and Karzai are merely following suit.

      We should let these Muslim factions eat each other. We should’ve pulled out immediately we witnessed Saddam swinging at the end of that rope. Damn any vacuum. We could stay there for a century more and there still would be a vacuum when we pulled out.

      Now, uh oh……those stockpiles of what remains of Saddam’s WMD’s are now much sought after by the Muslim sect du jour. Remember back when th’ media were chortling and snorting that “No WMD’s were found”?

  9. Wakinwest says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 3:58 pm

    Reality check time: Shia cannot deal and rule equitably with Sunni or Kurd, Sunni cannot do so either. Believing so is purely imaginary if not insane. This fact has overwhelmingly been demonstrated over and over again. It is made evident by the current debacle unfolding in the “democratic” state of Iraq. The one possible worst thing than a nation building adventure is getting in the middle of a civil war brewing for the past 1000 years involving islam. It is sheer folly, but with obozo lost in fantasiabad, screwing us up is not a remote possibility.There is no “good side” to join. One separate and independent state for each of the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis is the best solution long term. The sticking point will be the partitioning of the richer oil real-estate within greater Iraq. To further enhance the reach of iran would be utter imbecility. . Nuclear ballistic missiles pose a much greater long term challenge than the febrile AK 47 wielding crazed mohammedans. Trying one sided “assistance” will guarantee the eternal enmity of at least the other side.

  10. Wakinwest says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 4:02 pm

    test

  11. Wakingwest says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 4:21 pm

    Reality check: Shiia cannot deal and rule equitably with Sunni or Kurd, Sunni cannot do so either. Believing so is purely imaginary if not insane. This fact has overwhelmingly been demonstrated over and over again. It is made evident by the current debacle unfolding in the “democratic” state of Iraq.
    The one possible worst thing than a nation building adventure is getting in the middle of a civil war brewing for the past 1000 years involving islam. It is sheer folly, but with obozo lost in fantasiabad, screwing us up is not a remote possibility.There is no “good side” to join. One separate and independent state for each of the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis is the best solution long term. The sticking point will be the partitioning of the richer oil real-estate within greater Iraq.
    To further enhance the reach of iran would be utter imbecility. . Nuclear ballistic missiles pose a much greater long term challenge than the febrile AK 47 wielding crazed mohammedans. Trying one sided “assistance” will guarantee the eternal enmity of at least the other side.

    • jihad3tracker says

      Jun 20, 2014 at 4:33 pm

      Hello Wakingwest —

      Your point about partitioning as the solution was also suggested by Fareed Zakaria in today’s Washington Post newspaper.

      That opinion piece might also be available online — I have not checked.

      And, of course, you are right about the impossibility of Sunnis and Shias tolerating each other…

      I scratch my ancient noggin at how relentlessly Westerners who are confronted with the obvious STILL try to implement impossible solutions.

      Perhaps the answer was given in an observation I read several weeks ago (author forgotten) about John Kerry : “Diplomats hate intractable situations, and of course the situation in Iraq is intractable.”

      • Wakingwest says

        Jun 20, 2014 at 7:50 pm

        jihad3tracker, we can count on no other than honest speaking uncle Joe Biden among many who have experienced the necessary lucidity to realize that none of the groups mentioned get along and the natural remedy is separation. The sooner that Sunni side gets control of part of their historical homeland, as do the Kurd and the Shiite relent some, the sooner phase two of the redrawing of the ME can take place. It behooves all sides to respect the rights of the remaining Christians. this is necessary if they ever hope to get the international recognition and legitimacy needed to be a viable state in the future.

  12. Wakingwest says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 5:24 pm

    The level of Barbadian and inhumanity, even when done in retribution towards similarly guilty savages, is gut wrenching to behold. The conscience destroying capacity of islam and the hate it instills gives way to to what we are seeing taking place in iraq, an incarnation of evil. For those who doubt the existence of this dark force and have been living in walled isolation, watching for themselves some of the gruesome atrocities taking place will perhaps awaken them to the reality of it existence. Our framework of psychological understanding and socioeconomic explanations fail miserably in explaining away this low depth of human depravity.

  13. Wakingwest says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 5:26 pm

    Barbarism…. darn auto spell.

  14. pennant8 says

    Jun 20, 2014 at 7:55 pm

    Sorry General, but you are a little late coming to this realization. This is the way it has been since day one when we first got ourselves suckered into these endless Middle East wars. Once you put troops on the ground or in the air in any Muslim country you are by default fighting on the side of one Muslim sharia compliant side or the other. There is a way to avoid this dilemma, but we would never do it. For example, lets say we had a do-over with Afghanistan. We go on the ground Patton style and tell the government we are here to track down and eradicate al Qaeda, you stay the hell out of the way if you don’t want to get hurt, when we are done we are leaving and never looking back.

  15. BlueRaven says

    Jun 21, 2014 at 8:02 am

    Obama and his advisories are a bunch of dangerous clowns when they are thinking of getting us involved without any benefits. I do not want any American serviceman/servicewoman getting killed for what amount to is a simple Sunny – Shi..t war. We are not here to fight for the Islamic cult. I see it on the Youtube they way they mercilessly kill each other. That’s too bad and it is their problem. It is going to remain that way for the coming centuries. I don’t give a rat’s a§§. I care if he commits us to this in-breed fighting that we will never understand.

  16. Bill says

    Jun 21, 2014 at 9:59 am

    While General Petraeus is correct about this strategic question and others in the past, it must be remembered that he has provided cover for Obama on Benghazi asserting that as CIA director he (i.e. Petraeus) interpreted the attack as spontaneous in nature. Let’s also remember that Petraeus denegrated Israel by stating that Muslim antipathy towards Israel was the major cause of the upheaval, violence and war in the Middle East and that Americans who criticize Islam publically are guilty of inciting violence. In other words, Petraeus, in my mind, is unworthy of assuming any political leadership due to his unwillingness or inability to perceive that Islam itself is the root cause of the war, domestic violence, intolerance, authoritarianism and instability in the Middle East. He also proves himself to be a typical dangerous western authoritarian by displaying his willingness to negate our First Amendment rights as Americans in subjugation to Islam, the world’s most evil and retrograde force.

    • Charlie Griffith says

      Jun 21, 2014 at 11:25 am

      Re:
      “…..his [Petraeus’] unwillingness or inability to perceive that Islam itself is the root cause of the war, domestic violence, intolerance, authoritarianism and instability in the Middle East.”

      What on Earth prompts such a sweeping condemnation?

      • voegelinian says

        Jun 22, 2014 at 11:44 am

        It’s even worse than Charlie thinks. Read Diana West’s dozens of essays over the years about Petraeus and the whole lot of Keystone Generals the USA has had throughout the OBushma catastrophe.

    • bill says

      Jun 21, 2014 at 1:01 pm

      The criticism is due to the fact that I reject and resent westerners (like Petraeus and many, many others) and anyone who seeks to destroy or limit our First Amendment rights in support of political expediency, specifically the desire to avoid offending Muslims. And even worse, Petraeus, and many, many others like him in government, the media, business, education and throughout our entire western world are aiding and abetting Islam, the world’s most evil and retrograde social, political, economnic and religious force by seeking to condemn and now even criminalize those who criticize Islam. To misunderstand Islam as the root cause of the chaos, malaise and violence in the Middle East is to make a fatal error. To believe that western classical liberal democratic values, societies and institutions can cooexist with Islam is an grave and fatal error. Tolerance of Islam is tantamount with being tolerant of Nazism, Communism or codified mysogony or child abuse.

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