Archive for the ‘Iraq’ Category

Iraq: Dozens Found Handcuffed, Executed in, around Mosul … – Human Rights Watch

The gravestone of an unidentified man found dead in a trench in Gogjali and buried by residents.

In 15 of the cases, local armed forces told a foreign journalist that the men were extrajudicially killed by government security forces who had them in custody under suspicion of Islamic State (also known as ISIS) affiliation. In the remaining cases, reported by local and international sources, the sites of the apparent executions all in government held territory raise concerns about government responsibility for the killings. A foreign journalist also said that a government official told them that a Sunni Popular Mobilization Forces (known as the PMF or Hashd al-Sha'abi) unit, which is part of the government forces working to retake Mosul, was responsible for the extrajudicial killing of 25 men in their custody and dumping the bodies in the Tigris River.

Extrajudicial executions during an armed conflict are war crimes and if widespread or systematic, carried out as part of policy, would constitute crimes against humanity.

On May 13 and 15, 2017, two groups of aid workers and a foreign journalist said that they saw groups of corpses, 15 bodies in all, by the side of a road between the village of Athba and town of Hammam al-Alil, about 15 kilometers south of west Mosul. The area is entirely under the control of Iraqi government forces. One group said they had driven past the area a day earlier and the bodies had not been there, suggesting they were killed on May 12 or 13.

Local armed forces at the nearest checkpoint told the journalist that they saw Iraqi security forces bring the men to the area and shoot them. The journalist observed many bullet casings in the area on May 15. The journalist found an identity card on one of the bodies and confirmed with a contact within the National Security Service, a security body under the ultimate control of the prime minister, that the name was on their government database of about 90,000 people wanted for ISIS-affiliation.

Human Rights Watch obtained seven photos of the bodies at the site, which show the corpses in various lying and kneeling positions, all blindfolded with their hands bound with plastic handcuffs or fabric.

Human Rights Watch shared these photos with Stefan Schmitt of the International Forensic Program at Physicians for Human Rights, who said that there were no indications that the bodies were dragged or placed in the locations, such as drag marks or shifting of clothing. The positioning of at least two of the bodies was consistent with kneeling prior to execution and then falling forward, he said, and he concluded that it was likely the victims were executed in the place they were found.

An officer of the PMF 90th Brigade told Human Rights Watch over the phone that his forces were holding detainees in bathrooms of abandoned homes in Safina, a village 20 kilometers north of Qayyarah, along the Tigris River, and said they had business with the men they were holding. He said no visitors were allowed at the detention sites. On May 21, a foreign journalist told Human Rights Watch that a government official informed them that the 90th Brigade was holding alleged ISIS affiliates in the same village. According to the journalist, the official said the 90th Brigade had been holding detainees there for at least four months, and he personally knew of at least 25 detainees held there whom the 90th Brigade had executed and dumped into the river.

In several other cases, bound and blindfolded corpses of men whose bodies bore signs of being executed were found in government held parts in and around Mosul, aid workers and journalists told Human Rights Watch.

At the end of April 2017, an aid worker visited the morgue at Qayyarah hospital that had reopened about two months earlier. Human Rights Watch reviewed a photo the aid worker took inside the morgue of a large pile of bodies. On the top of the pile was a man who had been shot. He was lying chest down, with a blindfold and with his hands bound with plastic handcuffs. Human Rights Watch visited the hospital in mid-May and two head doctors told researchers that they had received orders from the health and defense ministers that they were not to respond to any information requests on the morgue, or allow any visitors. They did not provide a reason, but said it was a red line.

In late January, another foreign journalist showed Human Rights Watch pictures of the bodies of two bound men in a residential neighborhood of east Mosul fully under the control of Iraqi forces that he had taken two days earlier. Residents said they knew nothing about the identities of the men or circumstances of their death. Also in late January, Human Rights Watch interviewed a resident of the outskirts of Gogjali, a suburb of east Mosul, who pointed out a spot where he had found the body of a blindfolded man in the mud next to a trench. He and neighbors had buried the body. He said he knew nothing about the mans death or identity.

If Iraqi authorities want civilians who spent over two years living under ISIS to feel safe and protected, they need to ensure that anyone responsible for murdering prisoners is brought to justice, Fakih said.

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Iraq: Dozens Found Handcuffed, Executed in, around Mosul ... - Human Rights Watch

In Iraq and Syria, US-Led Coalition Killing Increasing Number of Civilians – Common Dreams


Common Dreams
In Iraq and Syria, US-Led Coalition Killing Increasing Number of Civilians
Common Dreams
With its latest official declaration estimating the number of innocent people killed by airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. military has admitted killing 484 civilians since beginning a bombing campaign and ground operations to unseat the Islamic ...
After tour of Iraq, R.I.'s Sen. Reed warns of post-ISIS dangersThe Providence Journal
Strikes Continue Against ISIS Targets in Syria, IraqDepartment of Defense
Coalition praises Shia paramilitary forces for their fight against ISIS in IraqARA News
U.S. News & World Report -Blasting News -Department of Defense -Operation Inherent Resolve
all 193 news articles »

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In Iraq and Syria, US-Led Coalition Killing Increasing Number of Civilians - Common Dreams

ISIS surrenders leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s hideout in Iraq – Economic Times

BAGHDAD: The Islamic State has surrendered the key town of Baaj in north-west Iraq, which was a known hideout of the terrorist group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Baaj had been under Islamist militants' control throughout the 14 years of war and insurgency.

After the surrender, the remaining ISIS fighters fled the town on Saturday night, allowing Shia militia forces to enter unopposed.

"The Iraqi flag has been hoisted above its buildings," a statement from the Popular Mobilisation Front, which is an umbrella organisation for pro-government paramilitaries that is dominated by Iran-backed Shia militias, announced the "total liberation" of the Baaj district.

The withdrawal leaves just a pocket of Mosul and the border town of Bukamal as the only urban centres in Iraq with a significant ISIS presence.

Bukamal is expected to be a new focus of both Iranian and U.S. efforts.

Meanwhile, U.S.-backed Kurdish troops are now within sight of Raqqa on three sides of the city and the battle to retake the city is likely to start sometime this month.

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ISIS surrenders leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's hideout in Iraq - Economic Times

After major losses in Iraq and Syria, London terror attack is an attempt by Isis to prove it’s still a major force – The Independent

The indiscriminate slaughter of ordinary members of the public on London Bridge and in Borough Market on Saturday night is fully in keeping with the operational methods of Isis. They have yet to claim responsibility, but it is extremely likely that they were ultimately behind an attack that bears so many Isis hallmarks.

The killings were probably triggered by a pre-arranged instruction to a cell or individual in Britain, the order coming from within the Isis apparatus, and not in response to a more generalised call to its sympathisers to make attacks in Europe and elsewhere. Isis is more professionally organised than is generally supposed, going by its track record over the last five years; its military and terrorist tactics traditionally involve those in charge deciding overall objectives and timings, but leaving local operatives to determine everything else.

Mass murder by Isis of defenceless civilians is frequently carried out in well-known or iconic places to ensure maximum publicity and to spread as much fear as possible. The perpetrators, for the most part, die along with their victims or soon afterwards, making a deliberate public demonstration of their religious commitment. The latest killings in London have all these characteristics, and are very similar in this respect to previous atrocities on Westminster Bridge carried out by Khalid Masood, and in the Manchester Arena by Salman Abedi.

The timing of these three acts of terrorism is most likely connected to Isis setbacks and retreats on the battlefield in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Its fighters have lost most of Mosul the centre of the self-declared Caliphate since Isis captured the city in 2014 which Iraqi security forces have been assaulting for seven months. The US-backed Syrian Kurds and their Arab allies have said in the last few days that they are about to storm Raqqa, the isolated Isis de facto Syrian capital on the Euphrates River.

Isis uses terrorism in a deliberately sadistic and attention-grabbing way to counter-balance any perception that it is weakening or is fought out. In return for minimum expenditure of men and resources on its part, it can demonstrate to the world that it is still in business despite its loss of territory. It welcomes denunciations because its savagery is geared to topping the news agenda. For this purpose, Isis films its own massacres, ritually decapitates journalists, burns captives alive or drowns them in cages. Last week, a bomb exploded outside an ice cream shop thronged with children in Baghdad killing at least 15, with some reports saying 30 people were killed and dozens more injured.

It has been suggested that the Western mass media plays into the hands of Isis or al-Qaeda by the wall-to-wall coverage of their crimes. But self-censorship is unrealistic since there is overwhelming and understandable public demand for information about terrorists and terrorism which needs to be satisfied. Where authoritarian governments censor or play down Isis and al-Qaeda acts and capabilities, as they do in much of the Middle East, the result is simply to create a vacuum of news and to discredit any media outlet that is silent.

The terrorist tactics used by the three men shot dead in Borough Market in the midst of their killing spree, have been developed by Salafi-jihadi movements over the last 20 years. The most notorious example of a suicidal terrorist attack of this nature was 9/11, when the World Trade Centre was destroyed, but they were used on a mass scale from beginning of the war in Iraq in 2003, though they were not pervasive in Afghanistan until later.

The effectiveness of this sort of terrorism is that the entire population is the target and cannot all be defended. Fanaticism but no great amount of military expertise is necessary, so Isis is not depleting its limited number of experienced fighters. Many of the untrained Isis supporters who arrived in Syria and Iraq in recent years, who did not speak Arabic and had no other useful skills, were deployed as suicide bombers, with more than 600 being dispatched, often in vehicles packed with explosives, in the first weeks of the Iraqi security forces advance into Mosul last year.

A further aim of the suicide bombings in Iraq and Syria is to spread out the security forces and to discredit the government in the eyes of its own people, on the grounds that it cannot defend them. In these countries, the ability of bombers to pass through numerous checkpoints without being stopped is often blamed on corruption, but, even when they are stopped, they can cause heavy casualties by blowing themselves up at a crowded security post.

The emphasis in Britain on seeking to stop Isis attacks by monitoring and neutralising some 23,000 Salafi-jihadi suspects can never be more than partially successful. Only five people are known to have been directly involved in the Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge killings, and these may have been selected, or self-selected, because they were not on a list of prime suspects. But the real key to preventing terrorist attacks lies not in Britain at all, but in eliminating Isis sanctuaries in Iraq and Syria which remain the inspiration and guiding hand for Isis worldwide.

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After major losses in Iraq and Syria, London terror attack is an attempt by Isis to prove it's still a major force - The Independent

Can the COINdinistas Save Iraq from Trump? – Lawfare (blog)

Editors Note: When the United States invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, it found itself woefully unprepared for the insurgency that followed. It took yearsand many lives lostfor the U.S. military to relearn how to fight insurgents, but the results were stunning. By the end of the decade, al-Qaeda in Iraq and other violent groups were on the run, and it looked like Iraq was on the path to stability. Zach Abels at the National Interest, however, warns that much of this valuable knowledge is being lost. In particular, the Trump administration's scorn for the civilian side of counterinsurgency is likely to prove disastrous, preventing the United States from marshaling its resources effectively to fight the Islamic State and other groups. A longer version of this piece was first published by the National Interest. It can be found here.

***

We have to start winning wars again, President Donald J. Trump exhorted on February 27. Days later, aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford, he pledged to give our military the tools you need to prevent war and, if required, to fight war and only do one thing. You know what that is? Win. Win! Were gonna start winning again. The irony is tragic and comedic, in equal measure. In mid-March, Trump released a 2018 budget blueprint that would deprive the military of the exact tools he promised them. He seeks to cripple the civilian agenciesthe State Department, USAID, and the United States Institute of Peacethat consolidate combat success into political victory.

The presidents budget betrays alarming national-security parochialism: Military power divorced from diplomacy cannot win conventional wars. In small wars, killing is even less decisive.

Americas post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq laid bare the limits of the military instrument. Vicious, resilient insurgencies waged by the Taliban, Iran-backed Shia militias, al-Qaeda in Iraq and, later, the Islamic State have imprinted haunting images on the American psyche.

Military power divorced from diplomacy cannot win conventional wars. In small wars, killing is even less decisive.

Trump rode those very waves of fear and angst into the White House. The publics hunger for closure pales in comparison with its thirst for blood. Over and over again, Trump bewitched voters with promises of consigning the Islamic State to the fires of hell. You gotta knock the hell out of them, he said at an Iowa campaign rally in January 2016. Boom! Boom! Boom! But evicting insurgents from their strongholds will not suffice. At this rate, an embarrassing jihadist comeback looms inevitable. The president cant afford for the next jihadi group to take root on his watch. Remember when candidate Trump accused Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of cofounding the Islamic State? The attack ads would write themselves.

If Trump were to succeed in budgetarily castrating the civilian agents of U.S. foreign policy, he would harm national security. In Iraq, where the administration has escalated the fight against the Islamic State, he would render the triumphs of servicemen and women fleeting. Killing bad guys is not enough. Without a concerted strategy of security, diplomacy and development, sectarian violence will once again engulf Iraq. Dj vu of the worst kindthe kind that sucks U.S. soldiers and dollars right back in.

No White House official is more keenly attuned to this dystopian fate than National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. H.R. knows firsthand the value of diplomacy in bringing conflict to a conclusion favorable to the United States, at the minimum possible cost in lives and dollars, retired Lt. Col. John Nagl told me. H.R. knows that in his bones. A warrior-scholar of the highest repute, Nagl is unencumbered by chain of command. It must gnaw at his innards, he said of his friend, that the administration he is serving is attempting to do this kind of damage to institutions that are so important to the security of our great nation. He was uninterested in mincing words: These ideas are asinine.

The Triangle of Death

The Iraq War was McMasters crucible. Along with David H. Petraeus, James N. Mattisnow Trumps defense secretaryand a cast of erudite field officers and civilian intellectuals, McMaster helped reengineer the American way of war. These battle-hardened rabble-rousers were dubbed COINdinistas, a tribute to the figurative insurgency they launched in order to teach the U.S. government how to fight literal insurgencies.

Scholarship and a penchant for innovation fueled the COINdinistas. In the early years of the war, Maj. Gens. Petraeus and Mattis dabbled in counterinsurgency, in Nineveh and Anbar provinces respectively. In the northwestern city of Tal Afar, Col. McMaster supplanted chaos with stability. His was the first systematic counterinsurgency operation of the Iraq Warconducted, as Fred Kaplan observes in The Insurgents, with total independence from headquartersat a time when the mere utterance of the i-word invited opprobrium.

In January 2007, George W. Bush succumbed to the COINdinistas years of intellectual salesmanship. America wasnt going to kill its way out of this morass. The president gave Petraeus charge of all U.S. forces in Iraq and green-lit the surge.

The surge drew military and nonmilitary personnel into a state of mutual dependence, made protecting Iraqi civilians a central mandate, and confronted the conflicts socio-economic accelerants.

The rise of counterinsurgency and injection of thirty thousand additional U.S. forces into Iraq have, in some quarters, been gratuitously mythologized. But attempts to abandon this history altogether are misguided. The surge drew military and nonmilitary personnel into a state of mutual dependence, made protecting Iraqi civilians a central mandate, and confronted the conflicts socio-economic accelerants. Killing jihadists was subordinated to a new directive: making sure their ilk couldnt return.

The surge gave warring factions a narrow window for political accommodation. Stop shooting, start talking. But security provision alone couldnt bring Iraqs insurgents to the table. In The Counterinsurgents Constitution, Ganesh Sitaraman sees justice and reconciliation as weapons of war, instruments of lawfare that can be designed to reduce or even eliminate the insurgency. At the height of the surge, an Army combat brigade and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), a congressionally-funded peacebuilding outfit on Trumps chopping block, put that theory to the test. Together, they weaponized reconciliation in the Triangle of Death.

Mahmudiya District, Baghdads ethnically mixed southern doorstep, deserved its bleak moniker. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic States forebear, ran riot. Assassinations, public beheadings, improvised explosive devices, and armed banditry punctuated virulent sectarian warfare. Not one man in a hundred will stand up to a real killer, Mattis once remarked to the author Bing West. Its ruthlessness that cows people.

Col. Michael M. Kershaw was told a year ahead of time that his brigade would deploy to Mahmudiya. Early on in his preparation, he realized that this was fundamentally a problem of counterinsurgency. Compared to McMaster, Petraeus, and Mattis, howeverall of whose counterinsurgency exploits have been vividly documented by West, Tom Ricks, Fred Kaplan, George Packer and, most recently, Dexter FilkinsKershaw flew under the radar. In The Endgame, Michael R. Gordon and retired Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor recognize Kershaw as one of the wars best tactical commanders. This assessment was shared by his peers, but not by his superior, who all but killed his chances of being promoted to general. It is the militarys loss. Kershaws pioneering work formed the same tapestry that brought glory to the headline-grabbing COINdinistas.

Kershaw, who happens to have shared a revolutionary-warfare class with McMaster at West Point in the early 1980s, commanded the Second Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division. He arrived in Mahmudiya in August 2006. From the outset, he told me, he was determined to harness something that would outlast our tour of duty. The Triangle of Deaths new counterinsurgents manned neighborhood outposts, with an eye toward restoring community security. Special operators killed and captured al-Qaeda fighters. Kershaws deputy, Lt. Col. John Laganelli, told me he worked to bring agricultural and economic-development capabilities into the region, to create some form of normalcy for the people. Meanwhile, the Awakening had moved from Anbar Province and was sweeping across Mahmudiya. Local Sunnis began betraying al-Qaeda, electing to fight alongside the U.S. military in exchange for pay and promises of safety.

In Kershaws telling, plenty of tribal leaders wanted to talk, but the Army was struggling to translate the ink dots of awakened locals into a big-picture compromise. And Kershaw was a leading authority on south Baghdad. I was the Mahmudiya expert, he said matter-of-factly. But man, I went to public school in east Texas. I could only scrape the surface. The language barrier. The culture barrier. Someone in Kershaws orbit coined the term sheikhapalooza to denote the unproductive theatrics that characterized the militarys sit-downs with tribal leaders.

By the summer of 2007, the Second Brigade had mauled al-Qaeda and the sectors other insurgent groups. A promising, yet tenuous, calm took hold. Fearing regression, Kershaws staff connected him with USIP. When he met with the institutes team in the Green Zone, a light bulb went off, he told me. Their set of capabilities was something we could not get elsewhere. They had Iraqis who could actually run the negotiations between the sheikhs. They could seat Iraqis with Iraqis.

USIPs objective, in its view, was to preempt revenge. Orchestrate a reconciliation process capable of suturing the ethno-sectarian wounds the jihadists had inflicted. Kershaw saw the institute in a utilitarian light: Just as he turned to Special Operations units to kill and capture irreconcilables, he turned to USIP to reconcile the rest. Those were desperate times, he told me. There were almost 2,200 IED incidents during the Second Brigades 15-month tour. Fifty-four soldiers were killed in action. He was eager to maximize the returns on their costly investment.

Just as he turned to Special Operations units to kill and capture irreconcilables, he turned to USIP to reconcile the rest.

USIP tapped into its reservoir of Iraqi intermediaries. They worked closely with the Second Brigade to map out Mahmudiyas intricate fault lines and volatile power centers. The resulting delegation turned its attention to the communitys exiled Sunni leaders, who had been forced to take refuge in Amman, Jordan. Both Rusty Barber, an architect of the USIP initiative, and Col. Kershaw described the links between these exiles and Mahmudiyas insurgents in cryptic terms. At the very least, Barber told me, they were capable of operating as spoilers to any agreement they were left out of. They definitely had blood on their hands, Kershaw said.

Among the delegates USIP recruited for the diplomatic mission was Ali al-Mufraji, Kershaws counterpart in the Iraqi army. In Amman, the most formidable source of agitation among the exiles was the widespread detention of Sunnis haphazardly branded as terrorist accomplices. Mufraji brandished his laptop, popped open a spreadsheet, and revealed the status of tribesmen in custody. His candor helped convince the exiles to endorse a Hail Mary dialogue.

The three-day conference, at Baghdads Al-Rashid Hotel, began on October 16. USIP crafted the format and agenda. The institutes Iraqi facilitators instructed participants in mediation techniques without besmirching their traditions. By the third day, pugnacious debate gave way to a concrete framework for the reconstruction of the district. Thirty-one Shia and Sunni tribal leaders acceded in view of Iraqi and foreign press. The pacts symbolic value wasnt lost on Kershaw: It legitimized the Awakening. Stop shooting, start talking was officially socially acceptable. Al-Qaeda had lost its local base of support.

Violence declined precipitously. The Third Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, which replaced Kershaws, lost a single soldier during its deployment. The Army trimmed its presence from a brigade of 3,500 to a battalion of 650. The entire USIP project cost U.S. taxpayers around $1.5 million, roughly the price of a single Tomahawk cruise missilefifty-nine of which Trump fired at a Syrian air base in April.

Confusing Activity with Progress

The Iraq War is as politically toxic as ever. In todays vituperative discourse, it functions as a reliable dog whistle that incites rabid denunciations of hegemonic overreach and paternalistic democracy promotion. But Iraq is more than a political football. The decision to invade, among the worst foreign-policy blunders in U.S. history, and the prosecution of the war are two different things. Conflating counterinsurgency with the neoconservative worldviewjust because they have Iraq in commonis reductive.

The Iraq War crystallized for McMaster, Mattis, and their fellow COINdinistas that defeating insurgents hinges on a symbiosis between soldier and civilian, between killing and rebuilding. In February, 121 retired three- and four-star officers reaffirmed that precise belief in a letter to Congress. They averred their strong conviction that elevating and strengthening diplomacy and development alongside defense are critical to keeping America safe. Historically, thats a bipartisan sentiment verging on gospel.

The Iraq War crystallized for McMaster, Mattis, and their fellow COINdinistas that defeating insurgents hinges on a symbiosis between soldier and civilian, between killing and rebuilding.

On May 23, the White House released its first full budget proposal. A New Foundation for American Greatness calls for a 29.1 percent cut to the State Department and foreign aid. It also moves to eliminate USIP, on the grounds that it serves a niche mission that duplicates other Federal programs. The sheer symbolism of Trumps draconian accounting, regardless of its plausibility on Capitol Hill, speaks volumes. Its shockwaves will reverberate and linger.

A short-term approach to long-term problems generated multiple short-term plans that often confused activity with progress, McMaster once wrote of Americas post-9/11 wars. Similarly, Donald Trump has confused tantalizing explosions with sound foreign policy. Were doing very well in Iraq, the president recently extolled. Our soldiers are fighting, and fighting like never before. In March, U.S.-led airstrikes killed more civilians than in any other month since the anti-Islamic State campaign began in 2014. There is no indication that the administration is prepared for the day after Mosul falls.

Meanwhile, a whole-of-government plan for defeating the Islamic State, which Mattis devised on Trumps orders, is collecting dust somewhere in the White House. Last month, Fred Kaplan reported that the defense secretary submitted his report on February 27. Since it landed on his desk, Trump has not responded to it, modified it, or approved it as policy, Kaplan learned. The neglected plan addresses the need for political stability after ISIS is defeated. More disconcerting, Steve Bannon may be conspiring to turn Trump against McMaster, in what one White House source described to Kate Brannen as Game of Thrones for morons. All of this reporting came in the span of three frantic days. On the second day, Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey. The administrations resident COINdinistas, it turns out, could face a fate worse than gaslighting.

The third day marked the apex of what John Oliver has aptly derided as Stupid Watergate. On May 10, Trump hosted Sergey V. Lavrov, Russias foreign minister, and Sergey I. Kislyak, Moscows ambassador in Washington. In Russian-snapped photos, the president appeared too chummy for someone who, the day prior, had sacked his FBI director in a poorly veiled attempt to squelch the investigation into his campaigns illicit ties with the Kremlin. Trump further impoverished that veil, telling his guests that he relieved Comey because he was a real nut job, according to the New York Times. I faced great pressure because of Russia, he continued. Thats taken off.

In that same meeting, the president also found time to divulge code-word-classified intelligence on the Islamic State, potentially compromising an allys spy network. The Israelis were unamused.

Beyond the obvious fallout, this kerfuffle has distracted Trumps otherwise scandal-repellant national security advisor from the essential task at hand: plugging holes in the administrations ramshackle foreign-policy machine. McMasters wholly appropriate defense of the presidents conduct has sparked a fair share of criticism.

As Stupid Watergate steals oxygen from whatever moderating influence McMaster has been exerting, Trumps counterproductive national-security policies persist. The presidents bomb the shit out of em approach belies echoes of Sisyphus: Trump may condemn the United States to a lifetime of boulder pushing. Higher and higher the military rolls the insurgent boulder up the hill. Just when the summit is in sight, the boulder falls to the bottom, crushing all in its path. And so on, for eternity.

The Iraq War seared such exercises in futility into the memories of the COINdinistas. McMaster knows more intimately than any other White House official the dangers of purging counterinsurgencys underlying principles for fear of conjuring images of failed nation building. And good policy need not be bad politics: Col. Kershaws collaboration with USIP is but one example of a cost-effective diplomatic effort complementing military sacrifice. If Trump were to scrap his budget, hed have at his disposal civilian combat multipliers uniquely equipped to render Iraq inhospitable to the insurgents who have cast such an indelible shadow over the American homeland. The real puzzle is whether the administrations few steady hands can guide Trump toward common sense without incurring his brazen wrath.

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Can the COINdinistas Save Iraq from Trump? - Lawfare (blog)