When Will We Fight the New Shiite Army We're Building in Iraq?

[Thom Little]

We do the damnedest things. We sell weapons to Saddam in the 1980's and then we turn around and invade Iraq in 2003 because we think he might still have those weapons. We build up a tough Muslim army in Afghanistan in the 1980's to fight the Russians and we wind up invading Afghanistan in 2001 to fight that same Muslim force ourselves. And now for the latest installment, we build up a Shiite army in Iraq only to fight them ...

You can fill in the blank. I'm not sure when we will go to war with the army we are so vigorously training right now in Iraq. But if history is any judge, what is certain is that we will fight them at some point.

Outside of historic generalities, there is ample reason to believe that there are specific reasons why we are likely to fight this Iraqi army. First, the so-called Iraqi army we're training right now is comprised mainly of Shiites and Kurds. They are fighting the Sunni insurgency, so the presence of Sunnis in the Iraqi army is limited and mostly for show.

Soon, the Kurds will split off into their own country and take their soldiers with them. If you asked the Kurds in the Iraqi army whether they would side with the new government of Iraq or with an independent Kurdistan in case of a conflict, you would have approximately three Kurds who would remain loyal to the Iraqi government. The rest of the peshmarga (the 100,000 strong Kurdish militia) would thank us very much for the extra training and weapons and go fight for something they actually believe in.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/when-will-we-fight-the-ne_b_11562.html

[Maggie_May]

1. As soon as

they figure out that we are stealing their oil and they want it back.

[phantom power]

2. In about 20 years. Time enough for a new generation of gullible...

young people to be available to send off to war.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Eventually they will align themselves with Iran.

If BushCo is still in power, and still has a hard-on for Iran, we'll end up fighting Iran's new Shi'a allies -- the soldiers we trained and armed.