Iraq is Still the Enemy

And our foreign aid budget helps fund the Jihadists in Iraq.

I won’t rehash the twenty years of debates over the Iraq War except to say that the end result was that Iran controls Iraq.

Baghdad is essentially a puppet regime of Tehran. The Shiite majority have a death grip on political power and have used it to crush the Kurds and Sunnis. And the United States has, even post-withdrawal, spent a fortune on training and aiding an enemy military force.

That’s essentially the admission coming from the Prime Minister of Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani described US airstrikes on facilities used by Hezbollah as a “clear and hostile act” Tuesday after three American troops were wounded in a terrorist drone strike the previous day.

As expected, it wasn’t the attack, one in a long series on Americans, that was the hostile act, but the American response.

The United States conducted limited strikes on the Shiite Jihadists of Kataib Hezbollah by going after their bases.

The Iraqi prime minster’s media office said in a statement that one member of Baghdad’s security forces was killed in the US strikes, while 18 others were wounded, including civilians.

Who was that member?

The security “serviceman” referenced in the Iraqi prime minister’s statement was a member of Hashd Al-Shaabi, known as Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), a predominantly Shia paramilitary force, according to a statement released by the group. In 2016, the Iraqi parliament passed a bill recognizing the Shia militia fighters as a government entity operating alongside the Iraqi military.

The PMUs are Shiite Jihadists just like Kataib Hezbollah. The difference is that the Shiite regime in Baghdad used the ISIS attacks as a pretext for sidelining the military and making the PMUs into their key force.

Essentially the regime in Baghdad is a Shiite terror group that is defended by them. Understandably they’re upset that we bombed their people. And, just as understandably, they support the attacks on us.

As I wrote earlier this year, our foreign aid budget helps fund the Jihadists in Iraq.

In 2020 and 2021, the United States spent over $600 million on foreign aid in Iraq. That’s down from a high of over $2 billion in 2018 and $4.4 billion in 2016. But it still means that we have blown through over $10 billion on Iraq since 2016. That’s long since we officially withdrew.

Meanwhile, where was Iraq’s money going? Iraq’s latest budget dedicates $2.8 billion to Shiite PMU terror militias including Kataeb Hezbollah: an Iran-backed terror group that has been responsible for the deaths of numerous American soldiers.

The United States has spent over $1 billion financing the nation’s military while Iraq spends billions financing the Iranian PMU terror militias which are expected to approach a quarter of million Jihadis.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani and his government were backed by the PMU’s and are turning them into an even bigger army.

That’s not surprising since al-Sudani is a second generation member of a Shiite Islamist movement loyal to Iran’s Islamic Revolution. The Shiite Coordination Framework, which is behind the Sudani government, is filled with Shiite Islamists groups with their own militias. For example, the Badr alliance, created by Iran, controls both sizable chunks of Iraq’s military and police forces, as well as one of the larger militias, and has a sizable presence in Iraq’s parliament.

A basic question is, “what the hell are we doing?”

Iraq is controlled by enemy forces. We’re funding some of them and we certainly aren’t there to do much except perhaps provide some support to the Kurds. There’s no plan here, meanwhile our people are under fire and the Biden administration is trying to maintain the status quo while responding with pinpricks.