Strange Danger

Obama Has Just Ordered 1500 Troops to Return to Iraq

If I were to ask you which American war has been longest, would you know the answer? If you're thinking Vietnam, you'd be mistaken. Perhaps you might suggest Afghanistan, which has been ongoing for 13 years and counting. You'd be wrong again. No, the longest American war is now Iraq, which has been ongoing for 23 years.

After the brief and devastating Operation Desert Storm, the United States spent more than a decade bombing Iraqi air defense systems within the no fly zones, as well as killing hundreds of thousands of civilians through the use of sanctions. The U.S. brought the hammer down on Iraq once again with Operation Iraqi Freedom and the occupation that followed.
 
Officially, the war has been declared a victory at least 4 times by various presidents, but looking back on it now, it looks more like one long procession of endless of conflict. Give it a few more years, and we may have another president declaring victory for the 5th time, because Obama has just ordered another brigade of U.S. troops into the region.

Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama has approved sending up to 1,500 additional troops to Iraq to aid Baghdad government and Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State group, roughly doubling the number of US troops in the country, the White House said Friday.

The 1,500 troops will include a group of advisors to help Iraqi forces plan operations and a group of trainers who will be deployed across the country, officials said, as Washington steps up the pressure on the IS militants.

Some of the advisors will be deployed to western Anbar province, where the Iraqi army has been forced to retreat from advancing IS jihadists, a defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity told AFP.

Some of the additional troops will begin to arrive in Iraq in the next several weeks, the official said.

"As a part of our strategy for strengthening partners on the ground, President Obama today authorized the deployment of up to 1,500 additional US military personnel in a non-combat role to train, advise, and assist Iraqi security forces, including Kurdish forces," a statement said.

In Iraq, there's no such thing as a “non-combat” role. After more than two decades of fighting against the most powerful military on the planet, the opposition forces in that country have become masters of asymmetric warfare. If anything, our occupation created the breeding ground that spawned ISIS and their brutal tactics. Make no mistake, there is no safe place in Iraq for U.S. troops, and they'll begin taking casualties as soon as they arrive.

And so it will continue until the United States finally admits defeat. We'll keep sending troops into the meat grinder, and they'll keep finding new ways to kill them. And as the war machine blasts that country into oblivion for the third time, we can look forward to creating new and more frightening enemies like ISIS.

Will this madness ever end?

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