By Sophie Pappas
For Dustin Long, 32, of Carmel, every time a headline is printed about Iraq, he cringes.
“People don’t really understand what’s going on,” Long said. “And maybe they never will.”
Long is a Zionsville native, who graduated from Zionsville Community High School in 2000 and immediately entered the Marine Corp. After eight years of active duty and three years in the reserves, Long is now retired.
“I had really good moments in war and really bad moments in war,” Long said. “But it was time for me to get out. Politics were getting too involved in combat and you can’t have politics in combat.”
Long was last deployed to Iraq in 2004, when he travelled to some of the country’s most hostile cities of Fallujah, Baghdad, Mosul and Ramadi.
It was here that he saw firsthand just how needy Iraqis are for a strong military and government.
“Saddam was an [expletive], but he did one thing right about leading the country,” Long said. “Iraqis need someone strong.”
But that doesn’t mean Long thinks the U.S. should intervene now. After U.S. President Barack Obama withdrew the American troops from Iraq in Jan. 2011, Iraqi armies and militias have had to fend for themselves.
“We should absolutely not go back into Iraq,” Long said. “I have always felt like Obama was a weak president but we’ve spent enough money and man hours training Iraqis. Now they need to protect themselves. And really, we knew this was going to happen. We knew it’d happen again.”
This year Iraq has seen an outbreak of civil war stemming from the violence of a Sunni Muslim group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. ISIS works closely with its Muslim brother group Al-Queda, and is responsible for the rebellions against Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad.
According to Long, Americans forget that these rebels are the same ones that Obama’s administration gave arms to last year during the peak of the Syrian civil war.
“Everyone forgets that we armed these rebels,” Long said, laughing. “But now that they are in Iraq we are all saying we’ve got to do something. It’s not a laughing matter but it is ridiculous. How do people forget this?”
The U.S. has already sent special task force troops to Baghdad in order to protect the U.S. embassy, even though Long doesn’t think its protectable.
“We will see another Benghazi in Iraq, no doubt,” he said.
Names to know:
- Nouri al-Maliki is the prime minister of Iraq
- Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi is the leader of ISIS
What is ISIS?
-ISIS stands for Isalmic State of Iraq and Syria
-This group is made up of Sunni Muslims. They are attacking Shia Muslim cities.
-They are connected to terrorist group Al-Queda and the rebels in Syria.
Who is fighting whom?
-Sunni extremists that are part of ISIS have started a civil war in Iraq against anyone who is not Sunni. This includes Shia Muslims, Christians, Jews, and ethnic groups like the Kurds or Yezidis. Their goal is to overthrow the government.
Why does this civil war matter to Americans?
Iraq’s central government, led by Maliki, is a political ally in the Middle East. Additionally, they are an oil-rich nation with strong financial ties. If a strong group of terrorist begin to rule in Iraq it is a direct security threat to Americans in the U.S.
