David Petraeus: U.S. must not be Iraq ‘air force for Shiite militias’

[hazlnut]

David Petraeus: U.S. must not be Iraq ‘air force for Shiite militias’

The man who led the US troop surge that preceded Washington’s exit from Iraq after a costly eight-year war says there should not even be US air support without major change in Baghdad.

The comments from General David Petraeus, who commanded US troops in Mosul — Iraq’s second city which fell to jihadists last week — during a long military and intelligence career, came as the Shiite-led government in Baghdad formally asked for air support.

Petraeus made a name for himself during the Sunni Arab insurgency that followed the US-led invasion of 2003 for questioning policies that he said risked fanning the resentment of the minority community that dominated Saddam Hussein’s regime and all previous governments in Baghdad.

Petraeus warned that Washington risked becoming an “air force for Shiite militias”, if it agreed to the request for support from Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, after the militants swept down from Mosul through a swathe of mainly Sunni Arab territory north of Baghdad.

The former top general and Central Intelligence Agency chief said there needed to be a radical change of politics in Baghdad to reflect Iraq’s multi-confessional, multi-ethnic make-up before any possibility of renewed US intervention should be considered.

“If there is to be support for Iraq, it has to be support for a government of Iraq that is a government of all the people and is representative of, and responsive to, all elements of Iraq,” he said.

“This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shiite militias, or a Shiite on Sunni Arab fight.”

Many Military leaders and conservatives are now saying the same. Leave it alone.