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Foreign trips for any president are an ego boost of the highest magnitude: red carpet arrival with bands playing music, troop reviews, and official dinners in your honor hosted in some of the most opulent palaces in the world. For President Trump, the stakes are high. With poll numbers at historic lows and controversies surrounding his presidency, Trump desperately needs to change the news narrative, at least for a few days. And what better way to do that than to embark on your first foreign trip as president.

The president can't get out of town fast enough. When Air Force One went wheels up from Joint Base Andrews on Friday, one can imagine the president felt a sense of relief as Washington quickly disappeared beneath him. Air Force One, at least for now, will be his safe zone.

When I recently asked a friend how he could log so many hours on Air Force One during the Clinton administration, he had an easy answer: the Lewinsky scandal! At a time when Clinton faced troubles at home, the best way to temporarily escape his troubles was to board the presidential aircraft and fly abroad.

But more than the comforts of Air Force One and the emotional shelter it provides to a president in turmoil, Trump will need to not only dominate the headlines over the next several days, he'll need to own them. And he can do that by making an unscheduled visit to Iraq.

From Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, it's a short flight. I know this because from 2008-2010, I traveled to Iraq 14 times as a civilian member of a special Department of Defense task force in charge of economic development and rebuilding as part of General David Petraeus' counter-insurgency strategy.

Foreign trips are always full of surprises, and this would certainly be one of them. Just last month, Trump sent his son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner to Iraq to meet with United States military officials and to receive an on-the-ground update on counter-Islamic State operations.

Middle East peace is one of Trump's loftier goals and an unscheduled visit to Iraq would benefit him greatly. Nothing speaks louder than a presidential visit to reaffirm U.S. commitment to the government of Iraq as well as the U.S. forces stationed there.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And nothing illustrates that better than Air Force One on the tarmac at Baghdad International Airport.

At a time when the president needs to change breaking news headlines, a visit to Iraq would do just that.

Mark Vargas (@MarkAVargas) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is co-founder and president of tech startup Licentiam. From 2007-2010, he served as a civilian within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. From 2008-2010 he traveled to Iraq 14 times.

If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read ourguidelines on submissions here.

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Why Trump must make a surprise visit to Iraq on his first foreign trip - Washington Examiner

The U.S. may need to keep as many as 20,000 troops and other military personnel in Iraq, even after the Islamic State is driven out, to stabilize the country, the former head of the Pentagons policy shop said Thursday.

A postwar force of between 4,000 to 8,000 American troops is probably sufficient to help local security forces ensure security in Iraq as ISIS faces defeat in its final stronghold in Mosul, Eric Edelman, the Pentagons top policy official during the George W. Bush administration, said in an interview.

The U.S. forces would likely be deployed as advisers, not combat troops, to support Iraqs police and military forces, he said.

We are dealing with an an ISIS that is severely, severely weakened after nearly two years of constant war against U.S.-backed Iraqi and Kurdish forces, said Mr. Edelman, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a Washington-based defense think tank.

The 5,000 to 20,000 troops called for in the report would provide enough military support for Iraqi forces to hold their own on the conventional battlefield and battle ISIS remnants with a classic counterinsurgency strategy.

The 5,000-man footprint tracks closely the troop levels authorized by President Obama when U.S. operations against ISIS in Iraq began in 2014. The high-end estimate would match the U.S. invasion force sent into Afghanistan in 2001.

U.S. and Iraqi officials say ISIS has lost nearly all its territory in the country and is poised to lose its Iraqi capital of Mosul. As battlefield and territorial losses mount, the group may be returning to its insurgent roots.

There is an imperative for some kind of residual U.S. military presence in Iraq, to ensure an ISIS-led insurgency does not drive the country back into the bloodshed and violence that engulfed the country during the darkest days of the American war, the reports author and CSBA Senior Fellow Hal Brands said.

Negotiations have begun between Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and U.S. officials in Baghdad on a new status of forces agreement, or SOFA, which will outline the legal and diplomatic parameters underpinning a long-term U.S. military presence in the country.

Mr. Edelman and Mr. Brands said the remaining U.S. forces will provide Mr. Abadi political cover against opponents of a long-term military mission in Iraq. Influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr vehemently opposes any American deployments into postwar Iraq. Other Iranian-backed Shiite groups are also lining up against an extended U.S. mission in the country.

Mr. Abadi will likely forgo a parliamentary vote on any SOFA deal and issue an agreement via executive action, Mr. Edelman said. The inability by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to push a SOFA deal through parliament resulted in the full withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country in 2011.

My hope is the experience of 2014 may prove that it may be worth paying a political price for keeping U.S. forces in the country, Mr. Brands added, regarding acceptance of a prolonged American presence by Iraqis.

Iraqi Shia will likely remain split over support for the U.S. postwar mission, while Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds will embrace the deal, since they see American forces as a necessary balance against Iranian influence, Mr. Edelman added.

Tehrans growing influence in the country, most notably via the network of majority Iranian-backed Shia militias known as Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF, could weigh heavily on any decision by the Pentagon to put more boots on the ground in Iraq.

One of the problems in the [coalition] campaign is that the partner [forces] hate each other more than they hate ISIS, Mr. Brands said. As ISIS gets closer to defeat, those underlying conflicts are coming to the surface in a major way.

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Thousands of U.S. forces may still be needed for post-ISIS Iraq - Washington Times

Half a dozen units of Islamic State group fighters holed up in western Mosul began their morning radio checks at just after 4 a.m. It was still dark and Iraqi forces deployed a few blocks away were listening in as they prepared an advance on the city's al-Rifai neighborhood.

"Thirty, what's new? ... 120, do you read me? What's up?" the IS radio operator said, using Iraqi slag.

About 40 minutes later the first U.S.-led coalition airstrike hit as Iraqi forces pushed across a main road and began clearing the neighborhood's narrow streets.

"We're seeing at least two squirters at the impact site," a member of the coalition force radioed back to the Iraqi troops in Australian-accented English, using a slang term for badly wounded IS fighters. Moments later the extremists were calling for doctors over their own radio network.

Over the next 12 hours, more than 10 coalition airstrikes hit al-Rifai's eastern edge. Most targeted small teams of two or three IS fighters manning sniper rifles or machine guns so Iraq's special forces units could advance on the ground.

Military operations like the one in al-Rifai this week are accelerating in Mosul as part of a drive to retake the handful of districts still under IS control before the holy month of Ramadan begins at the end of May. And despite recent allegations of increased civilian casualties, advances on the ground continue to be backed by heavy airstrikes and artillery.

Launched in mid-February, the fight for Mosul's western sector has been marked by some of the most difficult fighting and catastrophic destruction yet in Iraq's war against IS. The brutality of the operation was highlighted by a single incident just a month into the operation a U.S. airstrike on March 17 that killed more than 100 people sheltering in a home, according to residents and other witnesses interviewed by The Associated Press.

By contrast, Mosul's eastern half was retaken in 100 days of fighting. While front lines stalled at times, the area was less densely populated, neighborhoods were more modern with wider streets allowing tanks and other armored vehicles greater freedom of movement and the area was never under siege, allowing many IS fighters to flee westward.

The number of civilians reportedly killed in coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria spiked to 1,800 in March, more than three times the number reported a month earlier, according to Airwars, a London-based group that tracks civilian deaths from coalition airstrikes. Official figures from the Pentagon, which is slower in confirming deaths, are far lower: It said last month that it has confirmed coalition airstrikes killed at least 352 civilians in Iraq and Syria combined since the campaign against IS started in 2014.

The March 17 incident sparked outrage in Iraq and beyond. The U.N. called on Iraq to conduct "an urgent review of tactics to ensure that the impact on civilians is reduced to an absolute minimum."

The Pentagon is still investigating the incident but Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, said the munitions used by the U.S. that day should not have taken the entire building down, suggesting that militants may have deliberately gathered civilians there and planted other explosives.

An Iraqi officer overseeing the Mosul operation said that after the March 17 strike, he received orders to no longer target buildings with munitions. Instead airstrikes were directed to the streets and gardens beside IS locations. But the order lasted only a few days. Now, as Iraq's army, special forces and militarized federal police push to clear the last vestiges of western Mosul held by IS, the volume of airstrikes is the same as when the mission to retake western Mosul first began, said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

A few blocks from the front-line advance, Faisa Muhammed, her children and grandchildren huddled Tuesday on the ground floor of their home. Car bombs, airstrikes and mortar attacks had already broken every window in their house. Their street had been declared liberated the day before but the fight was still so close that the force of nearby explosions filled their living room with dust and blew open the curtains they had pulled closed over the shattered window frames.

Muhammed said two airstrikes hit on either side of her home over the past week. One killed a single IS fighter in a neighboring garden and another killed a three-member sniper team on the roof of another house.

"If we hear only 10 explosions in a day, that's very little," she said as her grandchildren sat quietly even as the walls around them shook. When the whine of a mortar sounded overhead everyone mechanically plugged their ears with their fingers. Soldiers took cover in her garden when a nearby airstrike sent rubble raining down on the street outside.

"This has become normal for the children," Muhammed said.

Just over eight square kilometers (three square miles) of western Mosul remains under IS control, but within that area is the Old City congested, densely populated terrain that is expected to present some of the most difficult fighting and greatest danger to civilians.

The renewed push to drive IS out of the remaining pockets still under its control was launched just over two weeks ago and since then Iraqi forces have retaken more than 30 square kilometers (12 square miles), according to the U.S.-led coalition, forcing thousands to flee. Some 500,000 people have fled western Mosul since February and the United Nations warned another 200,000 may be forced to flee as the operation continues.

U.N. humanitarian coordinator Lise Grande called the numbers "overwhelming."

Iraqi special forces Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi said he hopes to complete the Mosul operation before Ramadan begins around May 27 in order to get resources to the hundreds of thousands of civilians believed to be besieged in IS-held Mosul.

"It is very important to reach them very quickly," he said, adding that a victory before the holy month would "bring joy to the residents of Mosul and the troops."

Associated Press writers Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad and Mouhammad Nouman in Mosul contributed to this report

Excerpt from:
Airstrikes fuel Mosul gains as Iraq pushes for quick victory - ABC News

Iraq's Sunni minority is pushing for a greater say in power once the Islamic State group is defeated, reflecting growing sentiment that the country's government must be more inclusive to prevent extremism from gaining ground once again.

But so far, there's little momentum. Many Shiite politicians are wary, and the Sunni leadership is divided and disorganized. On the ground, tensions are further stoked because Shiite militias and Kurdish fighters control some mainly Sunni areas recaptured from IS militants and are resistant to withdrawing.

The danger is that Iraq will miss the chance to break the sectarian cycle that has fueled extremism for more than a decade.

Sunni resentment over disenfranchisement and the rise of Shiite power after the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein fueled an insurgency and gave a foothold to al-Qaida. The U.S. military, backed by Sunni tribal fighters, largely crushed al-Qaida. But Sunni bitterness over continued discrimination by Shiites helped in the subsequent rise of the Islamic State group. Each time, the rise of militants only deepened Shiite suspicions that the Sunnis cannot be trusted.

U.S. officials backing Baghdad in the fight against IS have warned repeatedly that the same could happen again now unless the government is made more inclusive.

A prominent Sunni lawmaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, said Iraq could fall apart unless a "historic compromise" is reached.

"Such compromise is a must, otherwise Iraq will be gone," the former parliament speaker told The Associated Press.

He and some Sunni factions put together a working paper outlining their stance for talks on a new system, calling for negotiations over dramatic changes to the constitution.

Shiite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has called repeatedly for unity after the defeat of IS, and Shiite politicians say they recognize the need for more inclusiveness.

"We have big concerns for the post-Daesh period," said Shiite lawmaker Ali al-Alaq, using an Arabic acronym for IS. He says proper distribution of resources and rebuilding of state institutions are key to keeping the country together.

He pointed to a referendum on independence that the Kurdish autonomous region aims to hold later this year. "We are concerned that Sunnis could demand the same," he said.

But any real talks are on hold while fighting still rages over the Islamic State group's last main urban bastion, Mosul.

And already there are fault lines over numerous issues.

SECURITY

The Sunni working paper calls for steps to address their complaints that crackdowns on militants have unfairly hurt their community. It demands a halt to "random arrests," the freeing of detainees not convicted of crimes and eventually a review of anti-terrorism laws.

Shiite politicians have long resisted those demands, pushing for a tougher fight against terrorism. Shiites estimated at up to 60 percent of the population of more than 36 million often suspect the Sunni minority of secret sympathies with militants and of aiming to regain power. Sunni Arabs dominated the ruling Baath Party and leadership positions during the rule of Saddam, a Sunni himself who brutally suppressed Shiites.

Long term, many Sunnis want provincial governors to have greater control over security forces on their soil, ensuring that Sunnis are patrolling Sunni regions.

Khalaf al-Hadidi, a provincial council member in Nineveh, the mainly Sunni province where Mosul is located, said local security forces need to be given a "bigger role in protecting the province. These (local) forces must be under the governor's control instead of many parties from outside the province."

But Shiite-led governments have long distrusted local Sunni security forces, at times refusing to arm or pay them. The collapse of mainly Sunni police forces in the face of the IS blitz of 2014 only reinforced Shiite fears that Sunnis would not act against militants.

MILITIAS

Intertwined with Sunni security demands is their deep opposition to Shiite militias, which have a major role in the fight against IS but are also accused of abuses against Sunnis. The working paper calls for the disbanding of the Hashd, the government-backed umbrella group of militias, most of them Shiite.

Far from agreeing to disband, however, the militias are pushing for greater official recognition of their power.

Shiite militias and Kurdish fighters hold significant parts of Nineveh province and other mainly Sunni areas. The Federal Police, an overwhelmingly Shiite force, is also fighting in Mosul alongside the military. Sunnis want those forces to leave quickly.

But a senior Shiite politician Ali Adeeb, head of the State of Law coalition in parliament said those forces cannot leave Mosul until there is "certainty that Daesh ideology will not return ... We are worried this ideology will come back and Daesh will come back to regain control."

DECENTRALIZATION

A main Sunni call is for greater authority and resources to be handed down to the provinces, giving Sunnis more say in areas they dominate.

A major issue would be how to distribute government funds. Sunnis have long complained that Shiite-majority areas get favored in budget spending, infrastructure development and directing of investments. That question will become particularly acute after IS's fall because billions of dollars are needed to rebuild Sunni cities destroyed in the fight against the militants and already there is grumbling that no plan has been put together for reconstruction.

The working paper also calls for significant reforms to ensure Sunnis have a voice in the central government. It demands an end to the system of divvying up government posts that effectively turns ministries into fiefdoms of political factions, particularly Shiite ones.

But that could meet resistance from Shiite parties with entrenched interests. Shiites also say their election victories carried by their demographic majority give them the right to set up ruling coalitions.

In the eyes of some Shiites, Sunni complaints over Shiite domination only fuel sectarianism. In comments Tuesday, senior Shiite politician Amar Hakeem warned against agendas that "pit communities, religions and sects against each other."

"One of the cracks through which Daesh entered was by playing with the social fabric and claiming to protect one community," he said, according to Iraqi press reports.

THE KURDS

Iraq faces another possible conflict over the Kurds. The Kurdish autonomous region in the north has repeatedly called for a referendum on full independence from Iraq. Now, Kurdish leadership says such a vote could happen as early as September.

That is potentially more explosive because the Kurds seized extensive areas outside their self-rule zone during fighting with IS. Most notably, they hold the oil-rich central province of Kirkuk, which they have long claimed as their own but has significant Sunni Arab and ethnic Turkmen communities.

SUNNI DIVISIONS

Not all Sunni factions have signed onto the working paper. Since Saddam's fall in 2003, Iraq's Sunni Arabs have been wracked by divisions and lack a strong political party to press their case in Baghdad.

If a compromise is not reached with Baghdad, it could strengthen calls for Sunnis to demand outright autonomy like the Kurds. So far, that holds limited appeal among Sunnis because their provinces lack resources and would likely be squeezed out of oil wealth.

Still, Atheel al-Nujaifi, the former Nineveh governor, is one of a few calling for a self-rule region. He says the priority is the liberate Mosul, then try talks with Baghdad. But failing that, Mosul residents have the right to create their own region.

"We will still need Baghdad only to protect the borders," he said.

Associated Press writer Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad contributed to this report.

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Sunnis seek greater say in post-IS Iraq but face resistance - ABC News

Clutching their rifles, the soldiers raced across the exposed rooftop, then crouched behind a wall that shielded them from the bullets of an invisible enemy hiding in the maze of Mosul's Hay al Aiqtisadiiyn neighbourhood.

Gas masks lay scattered on the ground or dangled from the belts of the soldiers, indicating that the battle for the Iraqi city has taken another turn for the worse even as victory draws close.

After seven months of fighting, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) is hemmed into a ever shrinking pocket on the west bank of the Tigris river.

Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, spokesman for Iraq's Joint Operations Command, on Tuesday told a news conference in Baghdad that the jihadists now control just over 10 per cent of the west Mosul.

Facing defeat, Isil has become increasingly ruthless in its attempts to slow its opponents' progress. Since April, the terror group has...

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Iraq troops face Isil chemical attacks in final battle for Mosul - Telegraph.co.uk