Ambassador Doug Silliman on the State of the U.S.-Iraq Relationship
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2019
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Few nations have a history with the United States that is as complicated as that of the Republic of Iraq. Today, several factors, including the Trump administration's campaign of maximum pressure against Iraq's neighbor Iran, are putting entirely new pressures on this relationship, one that many believe remains essential to maintaining regional security.
To help examine these dynamics and what they might mean, Scott R. Anderson spoke with Ambassador Douglas A. Silliman, the new president of The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, who from 2016 to early 2019 served as the United States ambassador in Baghdad.
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Transcript
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| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | It's really hard to conduct attacks against your military personnel, |
| 0:37.0 | because these militias would have to attack your rocky bases, |
| 0:41.0 | and potentially incur a rocky casualties in an attack on American forces. |
| 0:46.0 | It would be easier to go after our embassy in Baghdad or our consulate in Erbil, |
| 0:51.0 | where you can be much more sure that you will be targeting Americans and not targeting others. |
| 0:56.0 | This is what I fear. |
| 0:58.0 | That some group, probably one that is not directly out of the control of Iran, |
| 1:03.0 | might feel that they want to make a name for themselves by being the one that pushes the Americans out by increasing casualties. |
| 1:09.0 | And that's one of the fears that I see in Iraq. |
| 1:12.0 | Otherwise, I suspect that there will be a further entrenching in the population of this attitude |
| 1:18.0 | that neither the United States nor Iran really has Iraq's interest at heart, |
| 1:22.0 | and we are just fighting over Iraq not to the benefit of Iraqis, |
| 1:26.0 | and I would not like to see that continue. |
| 1:29.0 | I'm Scott Ar Anderson, and this is the LawFair podcast for July 30, 2019. |
| 1:35.0 | Few nations have a history with the United States that is as complicated as that of the Republic of Iraq. |
| 1:40.0 | Today, several factors, including the Trump administration's campaign of maximum pressure against Iraq's neighbor Iran, |
... |
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