According to Obama … the Sunni Do Not Exist

Iraqi Prime Minister al-Abadi visited the U.S. and held talks with U.S. President Obama. At the press conference following the meeting between al-Abadi and Obama, the American president spoke about the situation in Iraq and the relationship with the Iraqi regime.

Something Obama said was extremely dangerous because it reveals his true position and the nature of his plans in Iraq. He said:

“We expect Iran to have an important relationship with Iraq as a close neighbor. And obviously the fact that Iraq is a Shia-majority country means that it will be influenced and have relations with Iran as well. And at the point in which Daesh or ISIL was surging and the Iraqi government was still getting organized at that point, I think the mobilization of Shia militias was something that was understood to protect Baghdad or other critical areas.”

We are thoroughly contemplating this dangerous remark by Obama and what it means exactly.

First, when Obama says he understands Iraq's relations with Iran, he expresses this understanding against the backdrop of a broad debate about Iran’s effective invasion of Iraq, its violation of Iraq’s sovereignty, its support of sectarian militias, and its effective control over the Iraqi decision.

This means that Obama says he understands these kinds of relations, that he recognizes the role Iran plays in Iraq, but that he is not taking Iran’s violation of Iraq’s sovereignty seriously and does not object to the criminal sectarian role that Iran plays.

What confirms that this is the intended meaning of Obama’s remarks is that, at the press conference, and on any other occasion really, he didn’t utter a word of criticism about what Iran does with Iraq, nor did he raise any kind of objection about its role.

Second, we pause at length upon Obama’s remark that Iran and Iraq are “Shia-majority” countries. In one word, Obama erases any existence of the Sunni and any other minority in Iraq, stating as a legal opinion that the people of Iraq are Shia only. Of course, Obama knows that the people of Iraq are not only Shia, but whether he knows it or not, his remarks disclose his true thoughts toward Iraq, and reveal the nature of the political project in Iraq.

Obama wants to say that it is the Shia dominance over Iraq’s powers and the existing sectarian system in Iraq that marginalize the Sunni and all the other minorities in Iraqi society. Obama reveals that all American remarks about the need to involve Sunnis in Iraqi government and the importance that the government not be sectarian is just verbiage for public consumption and does not reflect the reality of the U.S. position.

Third, we consider how Obama warmly defends sectarian Shia militias, praising them and their role, portraying them as if they were a national force protecting Iraq in the face of the Islamic State. Obama says this and praises the sectarian militias, knowing full well about the heinous crimes committed in numerous Iraqi cities and villages against the Sunnis, as they are crimes documented in detail by many international and even American reports. There is enough here for us to speculate about the meaning of what Obama says about the militias now, after what happened in Tikrit.

Before the battles against the Islamic State group in Tikrit, in which the sectarian militias participated, U.S. officials themselves were at the forefront of those who forewarned that these militias would commit crimes in Tikrit after the Islamic State group was eliminated. Of course, this warning and the warnings that international organizations issued were based on the previous convictions that acknowledge all the militias and the horrible crimes they committed in every Sunni region that the Islamic State group was expelled from.

In spite of all these warnings, after the expulsion of the Islamic State group, the sectarian militias burned Tikrit in the literal sense of the word. These militias, as predicted, looted and plundered the homes of Tikrit and burned them completely; they looted and burned hundreds of homes and shops.

But Obama ignored all of this, went on praising the militias, and did not say one word about the crimes, nor did he request that al-Abadi hold those who committed the crimes accountable. All he said was that he was confident that al-Abadi would hold groups with sectarian motives accountable for the violations they committed. Why didn’t he demand that al-Abadi hold those who burned Tikrit accountable?

The reality is that this is what Obama said about the horror, and even though it is considered shocking to some, it is not strange at all. As I mentioned, all Obama did was simply reveal openly the nature of his positions and alliances in Iraq.

Have I not written many times before about the actual alliance existing in Iraq between the U.S. and Iran and the sectarian militias and sectarian Iraqi regime?

Obama’s remark is incorporated in the framework of this exact alliance.