Iraq Archives - Page 12 of 91 - Foreign Policy In Focus

Review: We Meant Well

by Christopher Bartlo | Mar 28, 2012

Peter Van Buren, a U.S. foreign service officer for 23 years, served the reconstruction effort in Iraq from 2009 to 2010. Appalled by the mismanagement he saw, Van Buren published We Meant Well in September 2011 detailing his experience and hoping to help the United States learn from its mistakes. The State Department launched an investigation of Van Buren’s whistleblowing but waited until mid-March 2012 to fire him — just “days before the Office of the Special Counsel was ready to begin their discovery request for documents” according to Van Buren’s Democracy Now! interview.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s Strategy for 2012

by Daniel DePetris | Mar 27, 2012

It was an ordinary early morning in Baghdad in February 2012. Mothers and fathers were stuck in the grueling traffic of the capital, on their way to work. Their children were all packed up and ready to go to school. Shops were opening up in Baghdad’s market, hoping to profit from the morning rush hour. Then, at a moment’s notice, Iraqis in Baghdad and several other Iraqi cities found themselves in the middle of a coordinated series of terrorist attacks.

Iraq and the Limits of U.S. Power

by Paul Mutter | Mar 19, 2012

“Washington has lost a valuable opportunity to nurture and support a key counterweight to Iranian influence among Shiites in the Arab world,” lament Danielle Pletka and Gary Schmitt of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute in an op-ed for the Washington Post. They subsequently call on the Obama administration to bulk up its already grossly overloaded staff at the gigantic U.S. embassy in Baghdad. But in these few words, the two writers fleshed out a more fundamental concern for hawkish pundits in the Middle East: the fear of a “Shia Crescent” of Iranian-backed regimes in Bagdad, Beirut, and Damascus linking the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf.

Darned Ingrate Iraqis!

by Donald Kaul | Mar 6, 2012

Iraq takes it personally.

Iran and Post-Withdrawal Iraq

by Richard Javad Heydarian | Feb 3, 2012

With the United States formally ending its military operations in Iraq, many analysts are beginning to examine Iran’s deep influence in the country. In light of of Iran’s growing tensions with the Westover its burgeoning nuclear program, Tehran’s maneuvers in Iraq carry tremendous strategic implications.

Failed Sanctions on Iran

by David Cortright | Feb 2, 2012

During his State of the Union address President Obama trumpeted the supposed success of tougher sanctions on Iran. U.S. policymakers seem to believe that stronger measures will deny the regime’s nuclear capability and force it to cry uncle. Although sanctions are indeed causing serious harm to the Iranian economy, they have not forced the government to comply with U.S. demands. Greater pressure seems only to have hardened the regime’s determination to press ahead with the nuclear program, while weakening the position of the country’s beleaguered civil society opposition.

Principled Intervention in Africa

by Francis Njubi Nesbitt | Feb 2, 2012

The recent indictment of four Kenyan leaders by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes represents the culmination of a remarkable process of local and international peacemaking. It also stands in stark contrast to Western military invasions in Ivory Coast and Libya last year. The ICC indicted four Kenyan leaders on January 23 for their role in the orgy of political violence that followed the disputed December 2007 election and left 1,200 dead and 250,000 displaced.

The Not-About-Iraqi-Oil Iraqi Oil Map

by Paul Mutter | Jan 10, 2012

Iraqi oil was always foremost in the minds of neocons.

MEK May Be a Terrorist Organization, But It Doesn’t Deserve to Be Butchered

by Russ Wellen | Dec 12, 2011

The remnants of Iranian dissident group the MEK confined to an Iraqi refugee camp face a massacre when the United States leaves.

The Under-Examined Story of Fallujah

by Hannah Gurman | Nov 23, 2011

Seven years after the U.S. invasion of Fallujah, there are reports of an alarming rise in the rates of birth defects and cancer. But the crisis, and its possible connection to weapons deployed by the United States during the war, remains woefully under-examined.