The Iraqi Parliament has just passed a resolution saying the government should end the US troop presence this year.
Iraq’s parliament passed a resolution on Sunday that said the government should end the presence of foreign troops in the country, and restrict the use of its resources.
“The government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting Islamic State due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory,” the resolution read, according to Reuters. “The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi called for the parliament to move to end the presence of foreign troops in the country, saying Sunday that a vote was necessary “for the sake of our national sovereignty.”
Though it is a non-binding resolution, it was an early move from the country in its response to the US airstrike that successfully killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian military official.
The strike set off concerns among American lawmakers and international authorities about a possible escalation in tensions with the Middle East, though President Donald Trump’s administration has insisted the targeted mission was a necessary response and a move towards peace.
Shortly after the special vote was reported, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly defended the presence of American troops in Iraq, saying on “Fox News Sunday” that he was “confident the Iraqi people” support a continued US presence and blamed the prime minister’s close ties to Iran for the vote.
“The prime minister is the acting prime minister,” Pompeo told host Chris Wallace. “He’s under enormous threats from the very Iranian leadership that we are pushing back against and we’re confident the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there.” (source)
In reality, this resolution is meaningless because it just asks if the Parliament ‘should’ end it. It does not specify an actual ending. Likewise, because of the recent incident with Iran, it is possible that Americans will support a buildup of US troop presence in the region, saying that Iraq is acting the way she is because of “Iranian influence”, and thus will result in the public supporting the very militarism which many said they were opposed to.
As Ted, Walid, and I have noted, there is a strong suspicion that the events taking place right now in Iran and Iraq are about helping Trump get re-elected.
Talk is cheap. Let’s wait until November 4th, 2020 to see what most likely Trump decides to do, because this is an election year, and anything Trump (or any politician) says or does will be measured against this.
It is easy for a politician to say anything he wants, from “Hope and Change” to “I’m with her” to “Build the wall”, but what matters is action. American politicians have a history of promising the heavens and delivering not even a handful of dirt, and Trump, who was given a genuinely unique historical opportunity to do something good for the country, did not even bother to deliver a handful of dirt, but chose liquid manure to spray in the faces of his base by way of his open contempt for them through his actions as compared to what his words were.
One knows that the Democrats have a history of lying and cheating, and so do the Republicans, and Americans are known to be unnaturally forgiving of their politicians. But Trump? He has no excuse for anything in his actions, and he has shown himself to continue the same policies of Obama, Bush II, Clinton, Bush I, and Reagan better than all of them.
This is why I emphasize that attention to “the issues” is not going to matter any more here because the fundamentals of the country have changed. America today is not what it was before, and fighting of the buzzing of flies on the same pile of garbage does not help get rid of the filth from which the flies grow in, but just makes one dirty and frustrated.
Let the chatter of the talking heads continue and the provocateurs go and provoke those to anger. This is not the hour to debate in the public arenas, but for the common man to turn to the fields and put his hands to the plow, working has hard as he can because a day of reckoning will come to the US, and it is not something that he can stop, but it is something that he can prepare himself and those close to him for.
This is the more important matter.