The Spectator

The new Iraq war

Obama – and Cameron – might like to back away from the War on Terror, but the other side didn't get the memo

[AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images] 
issue 14 June 2014

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[/audioplayer]Seven weeks ago, Barack Obama proclaimed that ‘it’s time to turn the page on more than a decade of war’. The people of Iraq do not have this option. They’ve seen, in Basra, Iran-backed militias take on and defeat the British military. They’ve seen highly effective jihadis, disowned by al-Qa’eda for their brutality, take control of a major city, Fallujah, just 40 miles from Baghdad. This week they have seen their second city, Mosul, fall to that same band of psychopaths. If Syria is anything to go by, religious cleansing, beheadings and even crucifixions will soon begin.

A new Iraq war is now underway. On one side is Nouri al-Maliki, Prime Minister of Iraq, on the other an al-Qa’eda offshoot called the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIS) which aims to create an Islamic emirate in the Iraq-Syria border.

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