© Global Look Press / Xinhua
Over the past few weeks, Iraq has slowly but surely begun its re-descent into chaos. According to reports, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest Iraq's current state of governance, with over 250 already being killed in clashes with security forces. One protester even died last week, after being hit in the chest by a tear-gas canister in Baghdad. At the time of writing, Iraqi protesters have just stormed Iran's consulate in the holy city of Karbala, resulting in four further deaths and at least 19 injuries.
I can't help but notice that, when Iraq is being ruled as a US client state, clashes with security forces that see hundreds of civilian deaths are no big deal. It's not as if the US can hustle the international community to legitimize another invasion of a country it's invaded twice before. It does therefore ring quite hypocritical when the sole basis of Washington's call for the Syrian government to step down in 2011 seemed to be based on allegations of a similar fact scenario. But that is a topic for a separate article.
Then again, it was the US who plunged Iraq into chaos to begin with. The US, together with the UK, toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, fired close to 500,000 police and military personnel (which to some extent contributed to the rise of ISIS), and facilitated the deaths of over one million Iraqi civilians in the process.
Comment: Though short of specifics, the article clearly points to Putin's on-going and successful efforts towards rooting out corruption and incompetence on his own turf. These very instructive efforts have played a crucial part in helping make Russia the viable and robust nation it has become today, and exemplify the crucial process of "draining the swamp" in order to strengthen a country's healthy functioning.
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