H. R. McMaster on lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan

In The Pipe Dream of Easy War H. R. McMaster looks at lessons to be learned from Iraq and Afghanistan. I especially liked this:

We must not equate military capabilities with strategy.

Australia's role in the Iraq War

David Wroe explores Australia's role in the Iraq War in The Secret Iraq Dossier. It seem Australia was basically there to strengthen the alliance, at minimal risk to our forces.

Article on what ISIS really wants

Graeme Wood in What ISIS Really Wants describes the beliefs driving the actions of ISIS.

A few more Iraq articles

Why U.S. military involvement will hurt Iraq and increase suicide terrorism by Robert Pape
Gwynne Dyer: Tony Blair talks ISIS and the Middle East
Mulling Iraq options: Begin by telling me which of these groups you want to bomb by Thomas E. Ricks
Uprising brings civil war threat closer to Iraq by Ruth Pollard

Jonathan Holmes on the real reason the US invaded Iraq

Jonathan Holmes in Neo-cons's naive dream to liberate Iraq explodes into nightmare writes that the reason for America's invasion of Iraq wasn't oil, it was ideology. It's one of the best articles I have read on why the invasion happened.

It’s easy to see clearly in hindsight. But sometimes it’s worth looking back at what people foresaw. The current crisis in Iraq displays more starkly than ever the wilful blindness of the architects of America’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

“When Saddam Hussein and his regime are nothing more than a horrible memory, the United States will remain committed to helping the Iraqi people establish a free, prosperous and peaceful Iraq that can serve as a beacon for the entire region.”

That’s what Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defence in the Bush Administration, told the Iraqi-American community in Detroit in February 2003.

Wolfowitz was one of the most influential of that group of intellectuals and political activists who had, for 30 years before 2003, urged that America must use its military might to oppose totalitarian dictatorships. They had attracted the label “neo-conservative”. But the title of the Four Corners program I made about them, which was aired just a week before the Iraq war began, was “American Dreamers”.

...

Paul Wolfowitz’s friend and academic ally, Lebanese-born Shi-ite Fouad Ajami, put it this way: “An idea is attached to this war, there is no doubt about it … it really is about the reform, not only of Iraq but … of the Arab world, an attempt to show the Egyptians and the Saudis and others that there is another way of organising political life.”

This was not mere rhetoric for the masses. The neo-cons believed it. And they had persuaded George W. to share the vision. In late February, he told the neo-cons’ own think tank, the American Enterprise Institute: “A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions.“

It was a beautiful dream. But to many, even then, it was extraordinarily naive.

The neo-cons, said Kurt Campbell, were not conservative at all: “one of the most powerful contributions that conservatives have made to our understanding of how to conduct foreign policy is not to overestimate consequences, don't be overly optimistic… if necessary be pessimistic… I think there is entirely too much optimism about what are the potential hopeful consequences of a major war in Iraq.”

When dreamers control armies, their dreams can be dangerous. But it tends not to be they who suffer, when the real-life nightmares arrive.

A few articles on ISIS and Iraq

7 Myths about the Radical Sunni Advance in Iraq

Iraqis Who Fled Mosul Say They Prefer Militants to Government

The Battle for Iraq Is a Saudi War on Iran

Isis secrets exposed

In How an arrest in Iraq revealed Isis's $2bn jihadist network Martin Chulov describes an arrest by Iraqi intelligence that exposed how wealthy Isis is.

Several hours later, the man he had served as a courier and been attempting to protect, Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, lay dead in his hideout near Mosul. From the home of the dead man and the captive, Iraqi forces hoovered up more than 160 computer flash sticks which contained the most detailed information yet known about the terror group.

The treasure trove included names and noms de guerre of all foreign fighters, senior leaders and their code words, initials of sources inside ministries and full accounts of the group's finances.

Quite a breach of operational security.