Dilip Simeon's blog

The scenes of the horrible destruction that Russia is inflicting on Ukraine’s civilian cities, from Kharkiv to Mariupol, and the killing of nearly  1,000 civilians , including nearly 100 children, have tugged at the world’s heart strings - and rightly so. Nineteen years ago, when the George W. Bush regime unleashed its “Shock and Awe” campaign on Iraqi cities, there was more celebration in the US press than condemnation.  John T. Correll at Air Force Magazine wrote in 2003,  , “The spectacular bombardment the world watched on television the first night was part of a broader attack that sent 1,000 strike sorties against military targets in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul, and elsewhere.”… https://www.juancole.com/2022/03/deplores-russias-spectacular.html JUAN COLE: The US would be on firmer ground declaring Putin a War Criminal if George W. Bush had been Tried / Aditya Chakrabortty: Western values? They enthroned the monster who is shelling Ukrainians today Sergei Loznitsa, the Ukr...

As a child in Baghdad, I opened my eyes to a world holding its whip and subjugating us Iraqis to collective punishment through sanctions and repeated wars.  Death in Iraq  was a spectacle on TV screens in the US. War coverage paid scarce attention to civilian casualties. As one Iraqi woman  put it  after the Gulf War, “Did they [Americans] ask where these tons and tons of explosives thrown fell? On whom? What happened there?” Now that I am in Washington DC, I walk around the capital of the ‘Empire’ and feel as if I am an  inferior being  who has barely survived repeated attempts at the obliteration of his species. As I make my way through the crowds, I think of how oblivious they must be to the bombs that were funded by their taxes and are still going off in my head. Sometimes the few who ask where I come from don’t even know where Iraq is on the map, as if nothing happened there. Most of those who bother to engage in a conversation with me don’t even a...

Donald Trump may act like a schoolyard bully and an impetuous infant, but he is not the only one to blame for recklessly bringing the world closer to a catastrophic war. While the responsibility for approving the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, Iran’s top general, in a drone strike near Baghdad international airport is certainly his, Trump’s actions would not have been possible without the deep infrastructure for war that lies at the core of the American political system, especially since 2001. After the “War on Terror” began, the United States - already a deeply militarized country - essentially abdicated public deliberations of war and peace when Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The executive branch has been invoking the AUMF for almost two decades as its primary legal basis for military operations around the world.  Put another way, war isn’t hell. War is mundane. We’ve already arrived at the point when even the Senate armed service...

NB : When Trump was first elected (and just before), numerous supposedly well-informed observers were looking forward to his presidency as a blow against Islamist extremism. Since then, he has demonstrated that his sole commitment is to his family business, the petro-chemical industry , the arms manufacturers , nullification of environmental regulations, rulers like Putin and regimes such as Saudi Arabia . He has abandoned the Kurds, who fought valiantly against ISIS; disregarded the Saudi royal family's involvement in the gruesome murder of journalist Khashoggi , and now assassinated the man ( no angel mind you), who played a big role in the defeat of ISIS.  Those who hoped this racist motor-mouth would at least pull his country back from endless armed global interventions are now faced with another round of armed conflict. I wonder if our local contingent of Trump-worshippers will now invent another set of rhetorical justifications for this manic president's decision, b...

When Trump took office, there was no US crisis with Iran. He created one  The Trump administration’s assassination on Thursday of General Qassem Suleimani could turn out to be its biggest foreign policy blunder. The killing could lead to a war with Iranian proxies across the Middle East, belying Trump’s supposed desire to extricate the US from its endless conflicts. But its most likely immediate effect will be to ratchet up pressure on the Iraqi government to expel US troops from Iraq. And that would mean Iran extending its already substantial influence over Iraqi government and society. The Trump administration was quick to portray the assassination as a pre-emptive strike, saying Suleimani had been “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.” Earlier on Thursday, the US defence secretary, Mark Esper, had warned from Washington, “The game has changed”.  But Trump has consistently increased tensions and cour...

What American corporate media won’t report is that Trump has put Iran under an almost complete economic blockade after breaching the 2015 nuclear accord that the US had signed. That accord removed economic sanctions on Iran in return for it mothballing 80% of its civilian nuclear enrichment program. That agreement could have formed the basis for reintegrating Iran into the world system and greatly reduced the tensions in the region for a generation. Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The madman in the White House has been sulking and raging for weeks about his impeachment proceedings, tweeting manically on some days more than 100 times. With the release by  JustSecurity.org  of unredacted emails on the Ukraine scandal showing that Trump personally (and illegally) withheld congressionally mandated military aid to an ally, the Republican defense of the president is collapsing. Iraqi Gov’t “Reviewing” US Relationship Some GOP senators such as Susan Collins and Lisa Murkows...

A third wave of protests in Iraq, following those in 2015 and 2018, continues to shake the three pillars of the regime - the constitution, electoral law and an independent judiciary - although protesters’ basic demands are not political. There is, nevertheless, a general conviction that they are impossible to achieve without a profound change in the so-called political process. Baghdad’s Youthquake: Iraq’s Young Protestors ‘Have Nothing Left To Lose’ This is evident in the debate accompanying the demonstrations which has covered the need to review the pillars on which the state’s actions are based, and activate the decisions of the anti-corruption bodies. There is also a need to resolve the controversy over the duality of the military and security establishment with the Popular Mobilisation Forces, the umbrella of around 40 mainly Shia militias. It is, therefore, a regime related crisis. It would have been contained if the government, political powers and the PMF’s Iranian...

The Saudis are taking a pasting. Video pictures from the Houthis of Saudi soldiers and their allies killed or surrendering inside the Saudi border town of Najran represent a devastating blow to a kingdom which is constantly threatening war against Iran.  If it can’t protect its own armed forces inside Saudi territory, what is the point of wasting time menacing Iran with military action over the massive destruction of the oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais almost two weeks ago? This is the same Saudi Arabia which kidnapped Lebanon’s prime minister Saad Hariri, bombed thousands of civilians in Yemen and tried to wipe out Qatar’s independence. Not to mention the little matter of chopping up Jamal Khashoggi almost one year ago in the country’s Istanbul consulate and then secretly burying bits of his body, for which Mohamed bin Salman – perhaps the worst crown prince in Saudi history – now takes national (but not personal) responsibility - More posts on Khashoggi The news that Kin...

Sir John Chilcot has delivered a devastating critique of Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in  Iraq  in 2003, with his long-awaited report concluding that Britain chose to join the US invasion before “peaceful options for disarmament” had been exhausted.  The head of the  Iraq war inquiry  said the UK’s decision to attack and occupy a sovereign state for the first time since the second world war was a decision of “utmost gravity”. He described Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, as “undoubtedly a brutal dictator” who had repressed his own people and attacked his neighbours. But Chilcot – whom  Gordon Brown asked seven years ago  to head an inquiry into the conflict – was withering about Blair’s choice to join the US invasion. Chilcot said: “We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.” The report suggests that ...

The assault on Fallujah has begun. United States-trained Iraqi army units supported by  Shi’a  militias and Iranian military personnel are attempting to dislodge Islamic State operatives who are deeply embedded in the Iraqi city, west of Baghdad. Some initial reports of success by the attacking forces were quickly modified. These are a salutary reminder of what happened in the similar assault on Ramadi in August 2015. Then, early optimism that the city would fall in a couple of weeks turned out to be hugely overblown. The siege ended up  lasting  for more than four months, and by the end of it much of the city lay in ruins. There are many gaps in the  current  reporting. There are no accounts of the intensity of the US air operations, nor of their direct support of operations by Shi’a  militias – something that they avoided when Tikrit  fell  in April 2015. The caution is most likely because the Pentagon is only too well aware that the S...

Kurdish forces triumphed over Isis in Kobani but the Syrian town is devastated.  The concrete eagle in what used to be Freedom Square still surveys Kobani imperiously. But around it almost nothing stands. Buildings have vanished during months of heavy shelling, replaced by snarls of steel and rubble, and the yawning craters left by US air strikes. One side street is blocked by the bodies of Isis fighters, rotting where they fell – a pile of bones marked only by a foul smell. On the muddy track that marks where another road led, a series of tattered sniper screens veils the destruction of the schools and homes where sharpshooters had sheltered. Everywhere there are bullet and shell casings, the twisted metal of spent mortar rounds and, often, the alarming outline of an unexploded shell, bulbous nose to the ground and tail fins spiking into the air. Kobani – free but in ruins   View gallery The Kurdish forces’ unexpected victory in this north Syrian town...

Isis militants have publically executed Samira Salih al-Nuaimi, a leading lawyer and human rights activist, who the terror group claimed that had abandoned Islam.  Al-Nuaimi was kidnapped by Isis (also known as Islamic State) on 17 September after she allegedly criticised the militant group’s destruction of places of worship in Mosul, Iraq, since it had taken control of the city, in comments posted on Facebook. She was then kidnapped from her home by a group of masked men and tried in a self-styled Sharia court for apostasy, which for the militants is considered to be an act of abandoning Islam by converting to another faith, or by committing actions that are against the Muslim faith. The militants then tortured al-Nuaimi for five days. Al-Nuaimi, who according to the Gulf Centre For Human Rights had worked on detainee rights and poverty, was then sentenced to “public execution” and killed on Monday. Her Facebook page appears to have been removed since her death. “By t...

In its savagery and brutality, the ISIS is acting strictly in accordance with the teachings and practice of al-Wahhab who enjoyed the active political support of the founder of the first Saudi state. In his Haj sermon on October 4 to the nearly two million Muslim pilgrims from across the globe assembled in Mecca, the Saudi Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, proclaimed that the killing of innocent human beings is the worst fitna (strife) and is strictly forbidden in Islam. Moving on from the general to the specific, he described the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the “enemy number one” of Islam and humanity. Sounds good, but it’s hardly good enough. Along with some other Sunni-majority Muslim countries in the region, Saudi Arabia is now part of the US-led coalition ostensibly committed to “degrading” and “destroying” the very monster they had until recently collectively nurtured in Syria and Iraq. Given the long-standing, mutually le...