New US Airstrikes In Iraq Intended to Protect Important Dam

U.S. military involvement in Iraq is heating up again; the sudden rise of the organization known as the Islamic State has put a kink in the gradual, ongoing winding down of U.S. military presence in that country, and today that kink has gotten a little sharper. From The New York Times: The United States launched a fresh series of airstrikes against Sunni fighters in Iraq late Saturday in what Defense Department officials described as a mission to stop militants from seizing an important dam on the Euphrates River and prevent the possibility of floodwaters being unleashed toward the capital, Baghdad. The attacks were aimed at militant fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as they were moving toward the Haditha Dam, officials said. The operation represented another expansion of the limited goals that President Obama set out when he announced last month that he had authorized airstrikes in Iraq.

Comments

Eurasia vs. oceania

[should_be_linear]

If Saddam was still in power, he would be major american ally in "fighting terrorists". Orwell would laugh his ass out if he lived to this day.

Re:Eurasia vs. oceania

[JaredOfEuropa]

Saddam, Assad, Ceausescu, Mubarak, all various shades of "bad guy" but good at something in particular: keeping warring factions in their own country out of each other's hair. And when the dictator leaves, old enemies have at it again.

What recent history has demonstrated is that stable democracy isn't a natural state of affairs that will come to pass if given the chance. One of our biggest mistakes in the Middle East was thinking that the folks over there would embrace democracy once freedom and free elections were established. And we can see the same thing here at home in Europe: people from more or less oppressive states in Africa or the Middle East emigrating to Europe do not wholeheartedly embrace our notion of democracy and freedom as we expected they would.