SNATCHING DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY

  

  I had an interesting conversation with an Iraqi man yesterday. For the sake of privacy I wont give his real name but I will call him Ahmad. Having been stationed in the Middle East I was able to open up a dialogue with him and found him to be very interesting. He is the second Iraqi that I have met. I worked with an Iraqi mall security officer that was an authentic hero in my mind. His name was Nick and he had been an interpreter for American forces in Iraq. He could speak pretty good English and was well trained in security. He had not only been an interpreter but had worked for Blackwater Security. Nick was compelled to come to America because al qaeda had placed a contract on his life. The Iraqi man that I talked to yesterday seemed very intelligent and friendly. He is a forty year old shiite Muslim that came to the United States in 2012. Ahmad was engaged to a woman in Iraq but they had to break off their relationship because she was unwilling to leave her family and come to the United States. I am naturally curious so I asked him if he thought America did the right thing by invading Iraq in 2003. He said that the invasion was the right thing and he would like to see a statue erected to George W. Bush in Iraq. I then asked him who the Americans were really fighting in Iraq. He said it was primarily the sunni Muslims that had lost their power with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. They had been in the minority in Iraq but were the elite class who had controlled all of the positions of power.

 With the exception of Iran, who are shiite, all of the surrounding countries were sunni Muslim and they felt threatened by the effort to replace the sunni regime in Iraq. They were feeding men into Iraq to fight the Americans. Then of course there were groups like al qaeda who were also fighting in Iraq. Ahmad said that the media distorted the real situation over there. He said that the majority of Iraqi's liked the Americans and that things were much better in Iraq since a Democratic government has been established. My dislike of Islam is well established but Ahmad is the type of immigrant that I welcome. He loves America and wants to become an American. He seemed very sincere and it was a pleasure to talk to someone who appreciated the freedoms that we take for granted here.

  I am not out to offend the Trump lovers here but it makes me angry when I hear Trump and the Democrats say that Iraq was a mistake. In the words of Ahmad Saddam was a criminal. I read a book a few years ago by a man who is not only a Christian but was the second most powerful man in the Iraqi Air Force. The book was called "Saddam's Secrets" by Georges Sada. He claimed that in the summer of 2002 under the cover of providing for humanitarian relief for a flood in Syria Saddam flew commercial airliners loaded with WMD's into Syria. The seats were ripped out of two airliners and between them 56 flights removed the WMD's. He said he knew this because he was personal friends with the two pilots that flew these planes. Saddam also knew that the Americans would eventually invade and this is why he removed them. As high as 1,700 people were killed in the Syrian city of Ghouta by a gas attack on August 21, 2013 by the Assad regime. Where did the Syrian's get the gas? On March 16, 1988 Saddam gassed the Kurdish people at Halabja killing as many as 5,000 people and wounding up to 10,000. He also used gas on Iranian troops during the Iran-Iraq war. Sada also stated that Saddam had planned an all out chemical attack on Israel by his Air Force at the start of the 1st Gulf War in 1991 but our Air Force was so good we destroyed his Air Force on the ground.

 Sada also said that Saddam wanted to sink an American aircraft carrier. I believe that the May 17, 1987 attack of an Iraqi Mirage F-1 fighter on the the U.S.S. Stark, an American frigate, sailing in waters off the Saudi Arabian coast was a practice run for destroying a carrier. The Mirage fired two Exocet missiles at the frigate. Fortunately for the Stark only one of the missiles exploded killing 37 sailors and wounding 21. This incident occurred during the Iran-Iraq war when we were aiding the Iraqi's in defeating the Iranians. We considered Iraq to be the lesser of two evils at that time. Iraq apologized and Saddam Hussein said that the pilot thought that Stark was an Iranian ship. The American government claimed that the Iraqi pilot wasn't acting under orders. Supposedly he was executed but this has been disputed. An Iraqi Air Force officer later said that the pilot wasn't punished and he was still alive. I thought at the time that this attack was fishy and I wasn't so ready to dismiss it as an accident. 

The USS Stark

Syrian gas victims in 2013

  In late April 1993 it was discovered that Saddam Hussein had tried to assassinate George H. W. Bush when he visited Kuwait with a car bomb. Luckily the plot was discovered saving the lives of not only Bush but his daughter-in-law Laura and no doubt hundreds of innocent people. America's invasion of Iraq was justified. It did not destabilize the Middle East. The American Army performed brilliantly. Yes we underestimated the level of resistance we would receive after our initial success, but George W. Bush was eventually able to adjust our military strategy and the surge would be successful in ending major resistance in 2007. Iraq was a military success that was squandered by Barack Hussein Obama after he pulled out all American troops in 2011. The war did not destabilize Iraq. Obama destabilized Iraq along with the entire Middle East.

 He started this process by not lending assistance to the democratic movement in Iran. Then by his overt support of the so-called Arab Spring which overthrew Hosni Mabarak in Egypt and replaced him with Mohammad Morsi. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood. This threatened the Camp David Accords negotiated between Anwar Sadat and Israel's Manachem Begin in the late 1970's. This treaty ended major wars between Israel, Egypt and the other Arab states. There had been a war in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. Luckily the Egyptian people overthrew Morsi and placed Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in power. El-Sisi is statesman reminiscent of Sadat. Obama was a Morsi supporter and upset with the Egyptians for throwing him out of power. It was the Muslim Brotherhood that had killed Anwar Sadat in 1981. After February 2012, rulers had been forced from power in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. Uprisings occurred in Syria and Bahrain. Serious protests had broke out in Iraq Jordan, Kuwait, and Algeria, Sudan and Morocco. Lesser protests happened in Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman, Western Sahara, and Palestine. The Arab Spring further destabilized the Middle East by the overthrow and murder of Muammar Gaddafi. He had already been made harmless by George W. Bush as a result of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Gaddafi figured that if Bush was willing to pop a cap on Saddam, he would be willing to do the same with him. He voluntarily turned over his WMD's to the United States for safekeeping.

 Because of Obama's Libyan bombing campaign and Gaddafi's overthrow, Libya is a mess and it led to Benghazi and the needless deaths of four brave American's. Last but not least Obama's attempt to bring down Assad in Syria, and his pullout of troops in Iraq has created a vacuum that gave birth to ISIS which poses the worst terrorist threat at home and abroad since September 11th 2001. Finally, abandoning Iraq and allowing ISIS to occupy areas that were dearly bought by the blood of our soldiers is shameful. I can only imagine what the loved ones of these soldiers think now and those maimed veterans that sacrificed so much in mind and body. George W. Bush brought stability to the Middle East. Obama has been the equivalent of a 10.9 earthquake.