Is There Hope for Iraq?

I go away for a few days to visit my family and it’s as if the world is ending. We have another cease fire in Israel that I am hoping will last and now the world’s attention is focused on Iraq and the murderous rampage of ISIS. I’ve been watching most of the summer as ISIS militants filtered out of Syria into Iraq and began murdering innocent men, women and children – the majority of them from Iraq’s Christian and Yazidi minorities.

Secretary of State John Kerry, in a press conference on June 22, stated that, “What is happening in Iraq is not happening because of the United States in terms of the current crisis.” I’m confused as to where he’s been for the past 10 years because what’s happening in Iraq is due in large part to the US. Part of the reason ISIS has been able to make so much ground into Iraq is because of lack of leadership in the Iraqi government and the United States’ weak foreign policy.

In the past few years the US government’s ambivalent attitude toward the Middle East has provided violent militants with the leeway needed to rise to power. Our vacillating on Syria, removal of troops from Iraq and soon Afghanistan and the mishandling of the Benghazi scandal have all shown the US to be inept in foreign policy. I’m not saying we need a war – in fact that’s the last thing we need. There are other ways to show strong foreign policy without starting a war. We never should have been in Iraq in the first place, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

ISIS has murdered members of the military, often beheading them and posting their heads on stakes or crucifying them. They’ve turned their guns on Iraq’s minority Christian and Yazidi population trapping thousands of refugees in the Sinjar Mountains where they risked death from dehydration and starvation. Ironically it’s the Kurdish armed forces who have been the saviors in Iraq’s most recent conflict. Once the target of Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons attacks during the Iraq – Iran War; the Kurdish people, now possibly being armed by the CIA, have stood their ground to protect these minority groups and themselves. This most recent conflict may provide the Kurds with the very ammunition they need to once and for all get their own country of Kurdistan.

As refugees flee into war-torn Syria the US government has finally begun to take action against ISIS and its rampage. We’ve known about ISIS’ rise to power for weeks, a group so vicious even Al Qaeda wants nothing to do with them, and what happens in Iraq over the next few weeks could have devastating consequences on the future stability of the extremely unstable Middle East.