US withdrawal from Iraq left door open for ISIL: Military officials

Several current and former US military leaders say the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2011 paved the way for the ISIL terrorist group to seize land and expand in the Middle East.

The military officials said US combat forces stationed in Iraq could have trained and prepared the country’s armed forces to prevent ISIL’s invasion of northern and western Iraq last winter and spring.

The recent assessment comes from the US Army chief of staff, a former head of US Central Command, a former defense secretary, a former Marine commandant and from the officer now running the war against ISIL in Iraq.

“If we had stayed a little more engaged, I think maybe it might have been prevented,” Army Chief of Staff Raymond Odierno told Fox News.

“I’ve always believed the United States played the role of honest broker between all the groups, and when we pulled ourselves out, we lost that role,” he said.

General James Amos, who served as the US Marines commander from 2010 until 2014, said the US must remain committed overseas, a view that could be read as criticizing the pullout from Iraq.

“I have a hard time believing that, had we been there, and worked with the government, and worked with parliament, and worked with the minister of defense, the minister of interior, I don’t think we’d be in the same shape we’re in today,” he said.

Despite this, many analysts believe that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003 until 2011 created favorable grounds for the growth of terrorist groups like ISIL.

Observers say that while the US and its allies claim they are fighting against terrorist groups like ISIL, they in fact helped create and train those organizations to wreak havoc in Muslim countries.

“The United States has been rather on two sides of this issue,” said Wayne Madsen, investigative journalist and author from Florida.

“They claim they’re fighting ISIL but the US-Saudi [Arabia] relationship and the US relationship with Qatar indicates that there’s been no action by the Americans to curtail those two countries; support for these Salafists acting in Syria and Iraq,” Madsen said in a phone interview with Press TV last week.

“There’s been more than ample number of reports that the US has airdropped supplies to ISIL forces in northern Iraq, has helped the so-called Free Syrian Army rebels in Syria that turned out to be groups affiliated with, if not members of, ISIL,” he added.

The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, are engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.

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