Iraq and Syria: What if bombing makes things worse?
With more than 1,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq, surveillance flights over Syria, and over 100 airstrikes launched in Iraq, it is time to start asking the hard questions about the latest U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. As David Petraeus so famously asked a decade ago, 'Tell me how this ends.' […]Stephen Miles writes for the Huffington Post blog:
With more than 1,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq, surveillance flights over Syria, and over 100 airstrikes launched in Iraq, it is time to start asking the hard questions about the latest U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. As David Petraeus so famously asked a decade ago, 'Tell me how this ends.'
However one felt about the humanitarian intervention to save the Yazidis stranded on Mt. Sinjar (and we can all be happy so many were safely evacuated), the U.S. military intervention in Iraq -- and potentially soon in Syria -- has become something completely different. As has so often been the case in conflict, the mission has crept its way from a noble humanitarian goal towards something far more complicated.
