Al Qaida’s resurgence in Iraq

The Iraqi government was engaged this week in a ferocious battle with al Qaida–affiliated militants who have captured the strategic cities of Fallujah and Ramadi in the western province of Anbar, raising the prospect of all-out civil war. The province, where almost a third of the 4,400 U.S. fatalities occurred in some of the Iraq War’s bloodiest fighting, has been overrun in recent weeks by fighters from the al Qaida–linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). As government forces surrounded and shelled Fallujah and carried out airstrikes on insurgent-held areas, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appealed to regional Sunni tribes and residents to “expel the terrorists.”

The U.S. this week stepped up shipments of drones and Hellfire missiles to the Iraqi military, amid fears that ISIS now controls a 400-mile swath across western Iraq and the north of neighboring Syria. But Secretary of State John Kerry made clear that no American troops would be sent in to help al-Maliki’s government. “This is their fight,” said Kerry, “but we’re going to help them in their fight.”

After the 2009 surge, Iraq and the U.S. had the rare chance to create a stable country, said Max Boot in WSJ.com. “This opportunity has been squandered.” The main culprits are al-Maliki and his “predatory, sectarian Shiite government,” which victimized Sunnis from the moment U.S. forces departed. President Obama is at fault, too, for having “foolishly pulled” out our troops before Iraq could stand on its own.

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You can’t blame Obama, said Jeffrey Goldberg in Bloomberg.com. The U.S. “did not create the problems that plague the Arab Middle East,” which is now clearly enmeshed in a radical civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. Nor is America equipped to inject itself successfully into these “complicated and hate-filled sectarian struggles.”

Regardless of blame, the terrorists have benefitted massively from the chaos, said Peter Bergen in CNN.com. “Indeed, al Qaida appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history.” It’s unsurprising, then, said The Boston Globe in an editorial, that military families across America look at Iraq and ask, “why did my child, my spouse have to die in the effort, only to have it all unravel?”