Obama announces sending military advisers to Iraq

United States faces two opponents in Iraq. The first is militant: Sunni jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (EIIL), who in recent weeks have taken key cities in the Middle Eastern country. The second is political adversary: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is Shiite.

The U.S. president, Barack Obama, yesterday stepped up pressure on the Iraqi prime minister to form a new government with Sunnis and Kurds, the other two large communities of Iraq, the Shiite – plus or leave power. The Secretary of State, John Kerry, will soon travel to the region to meet with regional leaders and Al Maliki.

“It is not for the United States to elect the leaders of Iraq,” Obama told a news conference at the White House after meeting with his national security team. “But it is clear that only the leaders who rule with an inclusive program will be able to truly unite the Iraqi people and overcome this crisis,” he added.

The Obama Administration attaches to the sectarian policies of Al Maliki part of the blame for the current mess and considered an obstacle to resolving the conflict. The president rejected a U.S. armed intervention to support a group against another and said there will be no military solution in Iraq, and less directed by the United States.

The White House exclude a troop deployment. Nor does it provide an immediate air strike. The only military action is, so far, strengthening collaboration with the Iraqi Armed Forces.

Obama said in the press sending up to 300 military advisers to Iraq, members of the U.S. special forces to help the Iraqi army before the advance of the jihadists EIIL. The military in addition to the 275 military that the Obama Administration has already deployed to protect the U.S. embassy in the Iraqi capital.

President Obama said that his country will form Iraq joint operations centers in Baghdad and northern Iraq. He said U.S. has strengthened surveillance and intelligence operations, including air, in the country.

Sending special forces, which in the future could be used to locate possible targets of bombings, is a limited but significant gesture. The U.S. has hundreds of special forces and special missions in the Middle East and Africa. And after withdrawing troops from Iraq in 2011, left a contingent of about 200 soldiers responsible for training Iraqi forces to use equipment and weapons that the Americans had left the country.

But Iraq is a special case. The 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation fiasco took any appetite for sending U.S. ground troops to this country. With the withdrawal of three and a half years ago, the Americans thought they had moved on. Now U.S. forces, although in principle not to fight, return.

There are doubts about the nature of special forces to help the Iraqi army and specifically on the possibility that open the door to a greater presence, as in Vietnam in the sixties. So the directors that the Administration of President John F. Kennedy sent were the prelude to an escalation that led to the biggest foreign policy disaster in U.S. to Iraq.

Now Obama determines entry into combat any prior political agreement. And do not be without the cooperation of the Iraqi Prime Minister Al Maliki is or its successor.

Applications for the prime minister to resign grow in Washington. ” Honestly, the Maliki government should go if you want any kind of reconciliation,” said Diane Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Robert Beecroft, and responsible in the State Department for Iraq and Iran, Brett McGurk, have maneuvered this week with leaders like Sunni and Shiite as Nujaifi Usama and Ahmad Chalabi to replace Maliki, according to Iraqi sources quoted by The New York Times. McGurk denied the same newspaper that these maneuvers exist.

“My opinion, shared by many Sunnis and Shiites, is that the Prime Minister has done enough damage,” Samir Sumaidaie told a group of journalists in Washington. He was ambassador of Iraq in Washington between 2006 and 2011 and resides in the U.S. capital.

Sumaidaie, like Obama, believes that before military intervention, Iraqi leaders must reach a political settlement.

The diplomat, who was the first emissary of his country in Washington in 15 years, is skeptical about the possibility that U.S. bomb to help the Iraqi government to stop the EIIL. “I’m concerned that any involvement of the Americans is interpreted in the context of this sectarian war and may be counterproductive,” he said.

Al Maliki is another in the list of protected U.S. who have finished creating problems for Washington. The newest Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the man President George W. Bush after the 9/11 that, over the years, became an uncomfortable ally for Obama.

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Posted by Maleeha Tareen on Jun 21 2014. Filed under Latest News, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.