Blog 6: War

Shiite Militia’s in Iraq previously boycotted American and Coalition air support because they believed it was not effective and was creating more problems than solutions. They boycotted the air strikes by not participating in the retaking of the City of Tikrit which is currently under the control of IS. The militias have again agreed to participate in the assault even with coalition air support. The issue originally raised after a friendly fire incident occurred when a U.S. air strike allegedly killed three Iraq federal police officers. The U.S. originally demanded that the Shiite militias withdraw and allow the Iraq army to take the lead, but since the success of the militia’s, there has been less and less opposition from the U.S. Some of the militia’s believe that the U.S. is purposely targeting them, and have even threatened to target American planes even though they are attacking mutual enemy forces. These conflicts between Coalition forces and the Iraq militia’s has stalled the advance against IS, and prevented the major advance that was hoped to stop and finish IS once and for all.  Most of the Militias have accepted that the U.S. will be involved, and gone back on their boycott, but there are still a few that refuse to be friendly to American forces being used in conjunction with the Iraq army. The reason the U.S. continues their operations is because the Iraq government has requested the use of these strikes due to the fact that their air force can’t effectively partake in nighttime bombings.  It is interesting to see the way that U.S. forces are still perceived in the Middle East. On one hand, they are not wanted, and rejected, but on the other hand there is a need for the U.S. to utilize its military superiority in order to aid countries that have lesser abilities. This seems to be the trend over the past few decades, and there isn’t any sign that there will be less U.S. presence in foreign conflicts.