The US prompted an Iran-Iraq war to counter Khomeini a year after he came to power. With the elite Iraqi forces busy at the home front fighting insurgents, several hundred thousands of Egyptians entered Iraq. Saddam gave them the rights equal to citizens’ and drew many Egyptians into the army at $600+ wages. Tens of thousands of Egyptians died in Iran-Iraq war. The US implores Syria and Iran’s cooperation over the Iraqi war, though it is Egypt that exerts the largest influence on Iraq.
Iran floods Iraq with Shiites to create demographic pressure and tip the elections. Saudis, afraid of Saddam, influenced Bush to overthrow him. Now Saudis aid Sunni militia on par with Iran’s aid to Shiites. A Shiite Iraq is Saudi’s nightmare because it will energize latent Shia majority in the Saudi oil regions. Iran staged many provocations in Saudi Arabia like sending huge numbers of pilgrims to Mecca to bug the Sunnis. Iran aims to bring down Saudi monarchy in favor of the Iranian-style democracy. Syria accepts Iranian protection but aids Iraqi Sunnis, not Shiites. In Lebanon, Syria helped Christians, Shiites, and Druzes. Pro-Syrian Shiite Hezbollah doesn’t want a civil war but Saniora pushes it against the wall to make the US interfere. Syria, like Saudi Arabia, needs civil war in Iraq to distract the US from changing Syrian regime. Syrian intelligence stirs Iraqi factions. Kuwait wants the Iraq embroiled in civil war rather than planning against its historically integral part, Kuwait. Iran needs that war to remove the prospect of American invasion. Israel assists Kurds to obtain a beachhead for the possible confrontation with Iran and Iraq. Kurds don’t want strong Iraq because it will deprive them of oil revenues. Turkey resents a strong Iraq which kills Kurdish separatists, stirring discontent among Turkey’s Kurds. Turkey also resents a weak Iraq which allows Kurdish independence, agitating Kurdish separatists in Turkey. Oil corporations clap their hands and pockets to the war in Iraq which drives up oil prices and profits.
American military industries, cash-starved since the end of the Cold War, needed a major procurement push resulting from the Iraqi war. American neocons want an action against rogue Muslim state. Iraq is a continuation of the US domestic policy: the purposeless war is meant to fool the voters into thinking that the government fights terrorism while, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran develop nuclear weapons unhindered. America similarly wiped its political errors with others’ lives in Lebanon (Israel invaded it after the US-sponsored democratic elections brought Hezbollah to power) and Palestine (America pushed for transparent and then prompted Fatah to fight democratically elected Hamas).
Lebanese civil war was settled through expulsion of militant Palestinians and exhaustion once Israel abandoned SLA and Syria reduced its financing of warring factions. Iraqi factions are well financed from abroad. Lebanon has a history of balancing Sunnis, Shia, and Christians in the intricate power-sharing arrangement. Iraq historically suppressed the factions, each of whom now advances power and economic demands. Iraqi insurgency is relatively easy to crush through wide-scale repressions against the supportive population, but liberal Americans don’t want to allow that. Iraqi army was weak; it suffered defeats from Kurds before Saddam. Now, with the commanders dead or in hiding, it would take years to build an army capable of crushing insurgency.
Every power in the Middle East has an interest in continuing the Iraqi war, and who cares about the people?
