国产热热热精品,亚洲视频久久】日韩,三级婷婷在线久久,99人妻精品视频,精品九热人人肉肉在线,AV东京热一区二区,91po在线视频观看,久久激情宗合,青青草黄色手机视频

Opinion / OP Rana

Cauldron of war boiling over in Iraq

By Op Rana (China Daily) Updated: 2014-07-01 07:40

Cauldron of war boiling over in IraqThe irony is complete. The country that defied the United Nations to lead an invasion of Iraq, the country that is squarely to blame for the tragic mess that Iraq is in today, the country that is responsible for the deaths of at least half a million people and the displacement of many more in what was once one of the leading economies and most open societies in the Middle East, is now being implored by the Iraqi government to come to its aid against an extremist force that in more ways than one was born out its divisive policies.

The "war on terror" that former US president George W. Bush declared after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States ignited the tinder box that was the Middle East then. The region (along with Afghanistan) has been exploding since then, devouring its own people with regularity and at times inflicting "collateral damage" on some of the world powers that colluded to seize the country in their greedy quest for oil on the pretext that Saddam Hussein was commanding an arsenal of "weapons of mass destruction" so large that it could debilitate the entire world.

The destructive march of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (or the Levant) in Iraq, against which Iraq is seeking US help, should not come as a surprise to people familiar with the situations in Iraq since the US invasion and Syria after the breakout of the civil war more than three years ago. ISIS has taken advantage of the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and the disarray that the Iraqi security forces are in. The eight-year-old extremist organization is essentially Sunni and opposed to the Shiite governments in Iraq and Syria.

But interestingly, a Sunni-majority Syria ruled by a Shiite (Alawite) government and a Shiite-majority Iraq ruled by a Sunni minority both followed the principles of the Ba'athParty, which was formed on the motto of Arab "unity, liberty and socialism". Not surprisingly the two countries were examples of the most open and advanced societies in the Middle East. The problem was that both Iraq, despite Saddam's dalliance with the US during the Iran-Iraq war, and Syria viewed the West with suspicion.

This is where the economics of war came in. And when it comes to a war economy, can the US afford not to be involved? After all, seven of the top 10 arms-selling companies in the world are US. The largest of these, Lockheed Martin, sold arms worth $36 billion in 2012, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The SPIRI does acknowledge that the sale of arms in 2012 was the lowest since 1998, but it also says that the "business of war" remains good, with the 100 largest arms producers and military services contractors selling weapons worth $395 billion in 2012, the most recent year for which figures are available.

Previous Page 1 2 Next Page

...
莱芜市| 隆化县| 松溪县| 沾化县| 茌平县| 岱山县| 辽宁省| 嘉善县| 临城县| 平利县| 公安县| 文水县| 盐池县| 独山县| 南平市| 新乐市| 合山市| 柳河县| 广汉市| 南通市| 普定县| 鸡东县| 天全县| 和林格尔县| 安平县| 揭西县| 丰台区| 广昌县| 大方县| 台南县| 凤台县| 璧山县| 藁城市| 尤溪县| 平远县| 吉木萨尔县| 赣州市| 潼南县| 姚安县| 木里| 苏尼特左旗|