Michael Totten - Iraq Quotes

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The U.S. is right to oppose both ISIS and the Assad regime. Syria's government has sponsored terrorism not only against every single one of its neighbors, but also against the United States in Iraq. But let's be honest: There will be no nonviolent political transition in Syria. The regime is overwhelmingly dominated by members of the non-Muslim Alawite minority, who will never negotiate with jihadists who want to impale them as infidels, nor with the ragtag democratic forces (now largely driven by Kurdish fighters) theoretically backed by the U.S.

Michael Totten
Trump has changed his position on Syria twice and even reversed himself once, but he still can't find the right answer... He said he thinks the Middle East would be better off if Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi were still in charge of Iraq and Libya, and that Syria will be better off if Bashar al-Assad remains in power for the same reason... He sounds like a random guy in a bar who's thinking out loud after reading a couple of newspaper articles that are fuzzy on the details. We all run into people like that once a while, people who don't really know anything about the Middle East but think they've got it all figured out anyway. He realizes it's hard, though, and figures, hey, let the Russians deal with it instead.

Michael Totten
The Iranian government has been a malignant force since the day it seized power in 1979. It has taken diplomats hostage, destabilized one neighboring state after another—beginning with Lebanon, then moving to Iraq, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen—and created terrorist armies that have killed Americans, Israelis, Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians and—yes—even Argentines. The Iranian government has done all this without nuclear weapons. The only reason it wasn't able to wreak even more havoc is because it was crippled by sanctions. That's over now.

Michael Totten
I visited Iraq seven times during the war... Baghdad, while ugly and dangerous, is vastly freer and more prosperous these days than Havana. Anyway, Iraq is precisely the kind of country with which Castro wants you to compare Cuba. It's the wrong comparison. So are impoverished Third World countries like Guatemala and Haiti. Cuba isn't a developing country; it's a once-developed country destroyed by its own government. Havana was a magnificent Western city once. It should be compared not with Baghdad, Kabul, Guatemala City, or Port-au-Prince but with formerly Communist Budapest, Prague, or Berlin. Havana's history mirrors theirs, after all.

Michael Totten
Donald Trump, along with Bernie Sanders and Gary Johnson and so many others, talks about Iraq as if the Middle East would be fine if the Baath Party were left in place in Baghdad. It's a frankly ludicrous proposition. The Baath Party is still in place next-door in Syria, and how's that working out? These kinds of governments can only keep a lid on things until they can't.

Michael Totten
I could only imagine how a Cuban would feel if he found himself whisked here from Havana with a ration card in his pocket and his state-imposed maximum wage of twenty dollars a month in his wallet. The only 'mall' I saw anywhere in Cuba was a dismal space, located inside a concrete box that looked like a parking garage and offering only the most meager selection of wares. I've been to better malls in Iraq.

Michael Totten
Iraq has never been a coherent nation-state; arguably, it wouldn't exist if the British Empire hadn't installed the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932. Its three biggest communities—Sunni Arabs, Shi'a Arabs and Kurds¬—have proven themselves incapable of living together in peace. The country will probably never be both democratic and stable within its current borders. Splitting Iraq into its three constituent parts would be better for the people who live there. It would be better for us, too, insofar as this separation would prevent the kind of unstable anarchy that breeds both Sunni and Shia militias, including ISIS.

Michael Totten
Nothing has actually changed except the American mood. Using ground troops in Syria and Iraq is no better or worse an idea after San Bernardino that it was before. The downsides are the same and at this point should be obvious. Lives will be lost, and some of them will be ours. American soldiers can't fix what ails the Middle East. Sure, they can overthrow dictators. They can kill terrorists and push them out of territory. But eliminating the appeal of a fascistic ideology is something else entirely. Replacing a totalitarian regime with some kind of functioning democracy in lands riven by ancient sectarian hatreds and hobbled by political and religious extremism is something else entirely.

Michael Totten
Lebanon and Iraq are the two most sectarian countries in the Arab world.

Michael Totten
Their absolute monarchy isn't drastically different from the ISIS 'caliphate' in Syria and Iraq except that Riyadh plays well with others diplomatically and pushes back hard against Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis do so for entirely self-interested reasons, of course. They don't care about human rights any more than the Iranians do. They're the world biggest proponents of hard-line Sunni fanaticism. The only reason they're bothered by ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood is because ISIS and the Brotherhood threaten the Saudi royal family's stranglehold on absolute power.

Michael Totten