Remember when we toppled Saddam Hussein? I’m not sure anyone in Australia ever believed that we were there in the name of freedom but, hey, it felt good!
Today we come full circle, rejoining the Iraqi war effort and with new hardware headed for the Middle East:
Australian forces could be involved in a humanitarian mission to Iraq within days, to provide food and water to the thousands of people stranded in the north of the country, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced.
Mr Abbott said the United States has asked Australia to consider participating in humanitarian air drops in the mountain area near the city of Sinjar and that officials in the US and Australia are currently in talks.
‘‘There is a looming humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in northern Iraq right now,” Mr Abbott told reporters in Sydney on Saturday.
We’re going to send two C-130s in the name of:
Mr Abbott said… it was important that Australia ‘‘join our international partners in doing what we can to render assistance’’.
And so it is. The US can’t resume military operations in Iraq without a coalition of the willing covering its privates. So off we go. Let’s hope we extract some more useful favours this time, the FTA produced last time was a case of self-harm.
Just one question, who are we defending this time? From Reuters:
Special forces loyal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki were deployed in strategic areas of Baghdad on Sunday night after he delivered a tough speech indicating he would not cave in to pressure to drop a bid for a third term, police sources said.
Pro-Maliki Shi’ite militias stepped up patrols in the capital, police said. An eyewitness said a tank was stationed at the entrance to Baghdad’s Green Zone, which houses government buildings.
In a speech on state television, Maliki accused Iraq’s Kurdish President Fouad Masoum of violating the constitution by missing a deadline for him to ask the biggest political bloc to nominate a prime minister and form a government.
“I will submit today an official complaint to the federal court against the president of the Republic for committing a clear constitutional violation for the sake of political calculations,” said Maliki.
Serving in a caretaker capacity since an inconclusive election in April, Maliki has defied calls by Sunnis, Kurds, some fellow Shi’ites, regional power broker Iran and Iraq’s top cleric for him to step aside for a less polarising figure.
The US appears to want Maliki gone but he wants to stay and is behaving rather like a proto-dictator. Not that it matters terribly viz our involvement – as the card carrying dependent ally we’ll do as instructed – but it’s interesting how history turns, no?
