US involvement in Iraq War 3.0 was initially sold as a limited, humanitarian rescue operation to save members of a religious minority the administration claimed were threatened by ISIS’s long march through northern Iraq. Who could object to rescuing a poor religious minority without sounding like a complete monster?
As expected, many otherwise suspicious of the use of military force in the US embraced this mission as an example of how the US military can be used as a force for good. Principled non-interventionists found themselves surrounded on all sides by those clamoring for a humanitarian rescue mission. Opposition having been mostly neutralized, the mission, of course, was launched.
The foot was in the door.
Soon we were told that the operation needed to expand a bit to protect US diplomatic and military facilities in northern Iraq from the marauding hordes of ISIS. Who could object to using the military to protect US diplomatic and military personnel? Skeptics were accused of not caring about American citizens or perhaps even wishing them harm. No thought was given to simply evacuating US government personnel from northern Iraq in the face of danger, as the US did recently in Libya when US-sponsored ‘liberation’ didn’t work out as planned and terrorists took over the country.
Then, in September 2014, we were told by the president that ISIS was the ‘greatest threat’ to the American people and the military operation had to be expanded to include more airstrikes designed to, in the president’s words, ‘degrade and ultimately destroy’ ISIS. This mission could be accomplished solely through airstrikes, he said, there would be no question of US boots again on the ground in Iraq.
This post was published at Lew Rockwell on January 19, 2015.
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