US F-16 Sale to Iraq: Profit over Principle

US plane maker Lockheed Martin has handed over the first of three dozen F-16 fighter jets to Iraq. What this means is that US politicians overseeing such sales have either been sleeping on the job, or are sunbathing on their new yachts.

The jet fighter sale is “a clear sign to the world and the region that a stable and strong Iraq, in a partnership of choice with the United States, is what we are after,” Iraq’s US ambassador, Lukman Faily, told the Star-Telegram newspaper in the United States.

That is not true: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s “partnership of choice” is not with the United States; it is with next door Iran – Washington’s regional nemesis. 

Then there are Maliki’s ties to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Didn’t the prime minister open up Iraq’s territory and airspace for Iran to send arms and fighters to Syria?

"Planes are flying from Iran to Syria via Iraq on an almost daily basis carrying IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) personnel and tens of tons of weapons to arm the Syrian security forces and militias fighting against the rebels," according to a Western intelligence report quoted by Reuters in September 2012.

Iran and Iraq are on the same side in Syria. The United States is on the opposite end, arming the rebels who want to overthrow Assad.

And how responsible is it to give advanced weapons to an unstable country that is reeling under sectarian violence and attacks by al-Qaeda and other insurgents? 

This week, in a new blow for the army, Maliki’s government lost control of Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul in the northwest, to the al-Qaeda splinter Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).  Also in trouble is Anbar province, where the army has been warring with insurgents and Sunni tribes all of this year.

Maliki has said the military needs the F-16s -- and other arms it is buying in multi-billion dollar deals from both the United States and Russia -- to crush Islamic insurgents. But the jihadists in Iraq are guerrillas, and fighter jets are not the best way to chase them.

How wise is it to sell advanced weapons to a government dominated by a prime minister who even his former Shiite allies have abandoned for being too “authoritarian?”  If he wins the third term he is after, Maliki will rule Iraq for another four years.

Iraq’s national security adviser, Falih Al-Fayyadh, hailed the handover of the first F-16 as “a weapon in the hands of all the people.”

But did anyone ask the Iraqi people whether they preferred fighter planes over schools, hospitals, water and electricity?

“Twenty-five years ago, Iraq was widely regarded as the most developed country in the Middle East,” according to a 2007 survey by the World Bank. “Since then, Iraq has been the only Middle Eastern country whose living standard has not improved,” the survey said.

It found that 14 percent of school-age children are out of school in Iraq, because they don’t have access to schools are so poor that they must work instead. Nearly a quarter of Iraqi adults are illiterate.

Since January this year, the US has sent 14 million rifle shells, tank rounds, hellfire missiles and 7,000 weapons that include rifles, rockets and launchers, according to Lt. Gen. Michael Bednarek, chief of the US Office of Security Cooperation-Iraq.

“We do not have any other ally that receives such a significant support in the security and defense sector,” Bednarek said in an interview with the pan-Arab Azzaman newspaper, published last month.

In January, Pentagon chiefs gave the US Congress another piece of good news: Their intention to sell 24 Apache attack helicopters to Iraq.

How responsible -- and ethical -- is it for the United States to sell $4.8 billion worth of choppers to a government that cannot even supply the vast majority of its population with basic services?

Only one-fifth of Iraqis had access to water from the general network all day long, according to a 2011 survey by the Iraq Knowledge network; Iraq’s electricity supply system is “particularly unreliable and serves its users only a few hours each day,” according to a UN inter-agency report.

There remains also the question of who the weapons are to be used against. Iraq’s Sunnis and Kurds, both locked in serious disputes with the central government that could turn to war, have raised fears that Baghdad’s arms could someday be turned against them.

But despite all objections and concerns, US leaders chose to let the F-16 and other sales go through.

With this sale, America has exposed its real foreign policy: Profit over principle.