Iraq's Parliament Must Act

Who knows what U.S. forces housed at an Iraqi military base near Kirkuk, the one that was attacked on Friday by Katyusha rockets resulting in the death of an American contractor (a.k.a., CIA mercenary), are really up to. The reporting on the presence of  U.S. military forces in Iraq and Syria is woeful. As of Friday it wasn't known who was responsible for the attack on the K1 military base. Yesterday the United States responded by attacking Kataib Hezbollah bases in Iraq and Syria. Kataib Hezbollah (KH) is a militia that is part of the Iraqi state-sanctioned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the self-defense forces mustered in response to the 2014 ISIS blitzkrieg of Mosul and Anbar.

As Moon of Alabama notes, the goal of the U.S. air strikes appears to have been to degrade Iraq's al-Qaem border station:

The al-Qaem/al-Bukamal border station is the only open one between Iraq and Syria which is not under U.S. control. The U.S. was furious when the Iraqi prime minister Adil Abdul Mahdi allowed it to be established. It was previously attacked by Israel which had launched its assault from a U.S. air force base in east Syria.

Iraq's parliamentary leadership, already under pressure from ongoing October Revolution protests, is going to have a respond to this U.S attack. As Reuters notes,

Iraq’s Fatih alliance, which holds the second-largest number of seats in parliament and largely consists of militia leaders, called the air strikes an attack on Iraq’s sovereignty.

PMF bases have been struck before, this past summer, by Israeli aircraft with U.S. logistical support. There was no incendiary reply from the PMF.

If it's true that the PMF are merely an Iranian cat's paw, then, since Iran favors the long game, there likely will be no proportionate response from Kataib Hezbollah.

But what has has changed since July is the political crisis spawned by the October Revolution. Parliament must act if it is to maintain any credibility. Let's hope that U.S. forces are asked to leave Iraq.