WATCHING events unfold in Gaza, I can’t stop thinking about Iraq.
Just like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq’s wars have long cast a shadow over the Middle East and acted as a haunting reminder to the West of its arrogance, negligence, culpability, and often arch stupidity in terms of policy in relation to the region.
But getting back to those parallels with Iraq, with almost every day that passes as Israeli forces push their way into Gaza, military experts have been drawing comparisons with those assaults on Iraqi cities like Fallujah in 2004, Sadr City a suburb of Baghdad in 2008 and of course Mosul in 2016-17. As the Iraq experience should have taught us by now, military victory does not measure alongside political achievement. That label of “forever wars” that has been steadfastly attached to America and Britain’s engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan tells us all we need to know about how diving headlong into such conflicts without thinking ahead will always fail to secure post-war peace.
THIS is the thing you see about so many of our political leaders, so few have any real grasp, understanding or experience of a region where the Iraq War still rankles and indeed angers many in the Middle East. Just like Bush back then Biden today did so without offering any explanation as to how Israel’s war would play out or what price would be enacted in terms of seeking some kind of post-war settlement with the Palestinians.
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