America’s retreat from maintaining a strong military presence and moral leadership in the Mideast and Asia is a strategic blunder that aggressive regimes, including Iran, will seek to use to their advantage, says one former Iraqi Parliamentarian and longtime friend of Israel.
Mithal al-Alusi, a Sunni Muslim who served in Iraq’s Parliament from 2005 to 2010, during which time he advocated normalized relations between Iraq and Israel, told JNS this week that Iran is using Iraq as a way station for transporting material for producing “missiles and drones” from Iran to the Gaza Strip. He also said that America’s precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan has created a “strategic vacuum” he believes will be exploited by Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia.
A champion of human rights, rule of law, free markets and democratic alliance, Alusi, 68, has paid a price for his principles. Forced to flee Iraq as a young man for protesting Saddam Hussein’s human-rights abuses, he returned to Iraq with his family following the entry of U.S. troops into the country in March 2003. In September 2004, after accepting a leadership position in Iraq’s de-Ba’athification Commission, he made a public visit to Israel, speaking about the importance of cooperation between Iraq and the Jewish state. As payback for their father’s public stand, terrorists murdered Alusi’s sons Ayman, 29, and Jamal, 22.
In 2005, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) awarded Alusi its Moral Courage Award for his determination, in the words of the AJC’s president David Harris, to “insist Iraq refuse anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.”
Despite numerous assassination attempts against him, Alusi remained in Iraq and was elected three times to parliament. He has consistently advocated for human rights, a free press and normalized relations/counterterrorism alliance among democracies, including the United States, Iraq and Israel. Since his sons’ murders, he has visited Israel several more times to attend the yearly counterterrorism conference at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), now known as Reichman University, in Herzliya, considered center stage for the articulation of Israel’s national defense policy.
Source: Cleveland Jewish News
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