March is a month of anniversaries. Two weeks ago, I wrote about the demonstrations that set Syria on the course for seven years of deadly and destructive war. During this week 15 years ago, the US invaded Iraq. This was the seminal event that has polarised and destabilised the region and led to the Syrian, Libyan and Yemeni wars as well as heavy-handed security crack-downs in Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere.

The chief culprit in the Iraq war was the US administration of George W. Bush. As his war has been widely condemned, he has generally kept a low profile since leaving office in 2009. But John Bolton, one of the neo-conservative cheerleaders for the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has now been appointed national security adviser by Donald Trump.

Bolton is bad news, particularly for this region. He adds to the pro-Israel hawks in the Trump administration and is a vehement opponent of the 2015 Iran-nuclear deal, which scaled down Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for lifting punitive international sanctions. Bolton’s appointment was applauded by right-wing Israeli figures and parties and welcomed by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the US domestic Israeli lobby. Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J-Street, the dovish US Jewish lobby, said in dismay, “We are horrified by [Bolton’s] selection  …and believe this move [by Trump] gravely imperils our country’s national standing and the fundamental security of the United States and its allies, including Israel.”

A strong supporter of Israel, Bolton joins Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, all Orthodox Jews devoted to Israel. Bolton is particularly dangerous on the foreign scene because he is considered “main-stream” rather than an extremist, although he expresses extremely hawkish views. He is also a risky appointee because childish Trump’s removal of H.R. McMaster, a US army general, “one of the adults in the room”, who, along with sacked secretary of state Rex Tillerson and incumbent chief-of-staff, John Kelly, tried to restrain the impulsive Trump. Selecting Bolton suggests Trump is likely to pull the US out of the Iran nuclear agreement as well as to put forward a Palestinian-Israeli peace plan Palestinians can never, never accept.

Bolton holds that preemptive military action against Iran could deter it from developing nuclear weapons, although this is precisely what the 2015 agreement has done. Bolton also argues there should be a “three-state solution” for the Palestinians. According to him, Egypt should rule Gaza and Jordan the Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank; East Jerusalem and Israeli West Bank colonies would be annexed by Israel. Such a “solution” would deprive the Palestinians of the vestiges of autonomy they still enjoy in the West Bank and place Gaza under a new Egyptian military occupation, which would finish off Hamas.

Bolton’s appointment constitutes a retrograde action as he continues to believe it was right to invent pretexts and wage war against Iraq. He insists the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein, taken at the behest of pro-Israeli neo-conservatives like Bolton, cannot be blamed for today’s regional turmoil.

Let’s have a look at how the US occupation of Iraq contributed to the current chaos. In 2003, the US bombed a country where the infrastructure had been repaired after sustaining major destruction by the war waged by George H.W. Bush in 1991. This was a campaign designed to wreak havoc with the advances made by that country since granted British-managed independence 1932 and secured real independence in 1958. The British bequeathed to Iraq borders, secularism, a professional, non-sectarian army and a decent administration. Iraq’s borders were compromised by invading forces and the other three assets destroyed by Bush junior’s war.

more:   http://jordantimes.com/opinion/michael-jansen/iraqs-war-seminal-event-polarised-destabilised-region