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Your letters: Softening-up process under way
If you thought we had seen the end of Western military involvement in Iraq, think again
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f you thought we had seen the end of Western military involvement in Iraq, think again. US President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott have not ruled out a further escalation in the conflict as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters make further inroads.
The US is continuing its air strikes on ISIL fighters in the hope of slowing their progress enough to allow the Iraqi army to repel them. Of course, the official discourse coming from the US is quite different.
The US is terming its actions humanitarian intervention, but air strikes will not stop the ISIL fighters, and guess who will bear the brunt of their anger ' minority groups.
The press is giving enormous coverage to the atrocities committed by ISIL but do we see any coverage of the atrocities committed by the current Iraqi government ' you bet your bottom dollar we do not. That would only muddy the waters.
Commercial and state television/radio and print media in Australia is awash with ISIL brutality, but do we see any analysis of how the ISIL rose to such prominence so quickly.
That might require looking at the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, which took up most of the first decade of this century.
Prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, we witnessed an extensive propaganda campaign aimed at convincing us that military action was needed in that country. The then US secretary of state Colin Powell presented the case against Saddam Hussein.
Weapons of mass destruction and links to international terrorists were the primary justifications given. It turned out that neither of these claims were true.
The current feeding frenzy by our media over ISIL atrocities is just attempt at softening up the public in order to justify further military escalation. It is fear mongering at its worst and driven by Islamophobes who will stop at nothing to demonize Muslims.
ISIL is a product of US foreign policy in Iraq and Syria. The US failed to stabilize Iraq and failed in its attempts to destabilize the Assad regime. In Syria, the US even considered arming the anti-Assad forces, which now make up ISIL.
The even greater irony is that many of the weapons supplied by the US to the Iraqi army are now in the hands of ISIL and being used to commit the very atrocities we see plastered all over our media.
The way forward in Iraq is not the US way. Iraqi's must be left to settle their own affairs. The US and Australia are only making the situation worse.
Adam Bonner
Brogo, Australia
