T

he United States isn'€™t escalating military action in Iraq in order to prevent a humanitarian disaster or prevent innocent minorities from being mistreated. Those are just ploys to win public support. Propaganda to convince the masses that good is prevailing over evil.

If only the propaganda were true, we wouldn'€™t need to examine their real motives. The US spent hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq in order to overthrow Saddam Hussein and then impose democracy on that country. They managed to hold the Iraqi Resistance in abeyance for a number of years but after they left in 2011, the deck of cards came crashing down. Why?

The answer is simple. It is because you can'€™t impose your own systems on another nation at gunpoint and then hope that once you pulled out the cards will stay in place. In June 2014, Islamic State (IS) fighters routed the Iraqi army from Mosul and much of northern Iraq. The US was left with egg all over its face and the prospect of Iraq falling to IS or being subdivided like Korea and Vietnam. As in those countries the US was not prepared to allow that to happen.

The US was prepared to overlook the corruption and atrocities committed by the Iraqi government because it could control it, but it couldn'€™t control IS. That'€™s the reason the US launched air strikes and why it is about to send in ground forces again. It has nothing to do with atrocities or humanitarian disasters and everything to do with US strategic interests in the region.

Now the US is using IS in the same way it used communism in the 1950s and 1960s. It needs a bogeyman in order to justify its hegemonic need for control over other nations. Let'€™s remember the US and Australia, my home country, have not been attacked. Its journalist James Foley may have lost his head, but journalists of all persuasions know they risk their life by going to Iraq.

Just as the formation of a Communist government in Vietnam or a Taliban regime in Afghanistan didn'€™t mean the end of the world, so an IS government in Iraq wouldn'€™t be the end of humanity. Indeed, it would require IS to utilize a whole different set of skills '€” something it may not be capable of. It is one thing to have military success but quite another to run a country successfully.

Iraq'€™s future must be determined by Iraqis even if that means going through more turmoil and bloodshed. Provided IS doesn'€™t implement grandiose plans for invading other nations, like the US, other countries should butt out of Iraq'€™s internal affairs.

Adam Bonner
Brogo, Australia