Regardless of their religion, I cannot stand religious fanatics. The scope of ISIS’s victories and the way they treat the people they subjugate are both appalling and terrifying.
The American in me wants to do something about this. I want to crush this fanatical movement and I want to help the hundreds of thousands of people who are fleeing from their homes. But I have no good ideas for how to do either of those things, primarily because other than the Kurds, there really aren’t any forces that we want to empower to confront ISIS. Things are so convoluted that I can’t even keep up with the shifting alliances. The government in Baghdad has now authorized airpower to help the Kurds launch a counteroffensive, after having denied the Kurds the ammunition they needed to defend their turf.
The whole Middle East is just an appalling cauldron of violence and disaster.
The speed with which the Islamic State of Iraq an al-Sham has moved and the fact that they have captured four army divisions worth of US weapons from the Iraqis now has the Saudis worried enough to call in reinforcements for its 500 mile border from Egypt and other close allies. Saudis are clear that a rapid symbolic seizure of Mecca and Medina would greatly enhance ISIS’s power of propaganda. How would a military force dislodge them?
ISIS is not about governance–at least not yet–it is about campaigning as rapidly as possible to capture as much of the Islamic world as they can in one swoop. When they are forced to govern, they will be overthrown because of their brutality and because they finally are a small minority. As long as they keep capturing the armaments that the US has foolishly forward-positioned in the Middle East, they can keep rolling.
This is due the the geniuses in DC and Israel who thought that arming militants in Syria to topple Assad was a good idea and that the distraction in Ukraine was a winner. Too bad that they were the ones with the President’s ear.
Maliki is incompetent in the same way Morsi was. A unity government in Baghdad would help, but he holds all the national security and interior security portfolios and stands in the way.
Turkey is the obvious force to attack ISIS from the rear, but will not because they want to topple Assad and suppress Kurdish nationalism.
Now can we take Bush and Cheney to the ICC?
The Iraqis may be doin’ it for themselves. Citizens in Mosul are forming gangs and attacking ISIS soldiers.
“The people of Mosul are intensely angry at ISIS,” al-Kiki told The Times. “They can’t bear them anymore. This volcano of anger will explode soon.”
ISIS likes to demolish historical landmarks, but the people in Mosul have stopped them at least once.
http://www.businessinsider.com/mosul-residents-have-started-clashing-with-isis-2014-7
Watch and see. Bush & Cheney, Inc., sure did stir themselves up a hornet’s nest. Ain’t gonna calm down any time soon. (All blamed on Obama, of course)
At least liberals admit disasters exists in the Middle East and in some Latin American countries. Neo-cons view it as an opportunity for more war.
DFHs (aka lefties) did their best to explain what happens when governments/regimes are toppled using violent means and/or US financial and/or military assets. But nobody listens to us. Opposed it in Aghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Urkraine, and all the less known covert operations that barely surface momentarily in some limited news site including Honduras.
Now I have to endure all the liberal hand wringing and laments that “the world is a mess.” And their soon to abate disgust with the President they generally defend for saying, “yeah, we tortured some guys.” “But it was because we were so scared and the torturers were really good guys, and lefties are sanctimonious.”
I thought you favored toppling the Ukrainian government?
Which Ukrainian government?
What I support is self-government by the inhabitants of all nations without outside interference in support of the existing government or those who want to change it. Preferably democratically and without violence.
But remember, folks, Hillary Clinton’s AUMF vote is so 2008 and won’t be an issue going forward. It’s not like the Republican Party won’t collectively develop amnesia after they run a candidate untainted by the Iraq War debacle and lay the blame of the Iraq clusterfuck on her.
If I were her, I’d be spending several sleepless nights putting together and field testing a narrative. Depending on how 2014-2016 goes, the mummified hand of Saddam Hussein might pull her down into the grave a second time.
I’m going to get on my high horse for a bit, but, I think that one good thing that came out of George H. W. Bush’s Presidency is that it proved once and for all that cynically voting for war just to improve your electoral prospects is a fool’s bet.
The Gulf War was pretty much the kind of war that camera-preening fake-tough guy realpolitickers dream about. Quick, cinematic, an unsympathetic enemy that’s easy to ‘other’, support of everyone except the hippies, and an enemy that’s able to put up enough resistance to not make you look like a bully but not so much to drive up those messy casualties.
And yet, Pres. Bush Sr. went down in flames a mere year and a half later.
My pet theory is that the American public’s memory is short on the good and long on the bad. They’ll remember fuck-ups for decades but successes get thrown into the ‘what have you done for me LATELY’ pile. Maybe George Bush Sr. would’ve pulled it off if the Gulf War concluded in the same neoconservatively optimally manner six months ago, but these things are hard to schedule.
The takeaway from this is that no matter how cynical the politician is and no matter how indifferent you are to the loss of life and treasure, you should still nonetheless be very careful about warhawkery. If things go ‘well’ then the public will probably not give you credit for it. And there’s a lot of ways that it can go poorly for you and bite you in the ass years later.
And who is going to dare voice the idea that she isn’t invetiable?
They say…ISIS might be on its way to Mecca.
That would be interesting.
Doesn’t change my opinion that not one more American soldier needs to be put into harms way for that region.
I have been busy collecting background information of a mystery man Radek Sikorski who has participated in the Orange Revolution of Ukraine. He was defense minister of Poland and now is its foreign minister pushing a hardline on the Ukraine and NATO expansion. It appears he was involved with British mercenaries in Angola and was present [!] in Tora Bora in September 1986 to witness the first delivery of Stinger missiles to the mujahideen for their war against the Soviet Union. It appears Sikorski is British SAS, MI6 or CIA.
The Polish defence minister Radislaw Sikorski has compared a planned German-Russian gas pipeline
to the 1939 Hitler-Stalin deal partitioning Poland, the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
In the year 2012, Radek Sikorski held a ‘debate’ in Warsaw with Dr. Henry Kissinger who was lauded for his magnificent feats to create a new world to America’s
blueprintliking.Here is the video – FM Radoslaw Sikorski – Dr. Henry Kissinger Debate on Europe Warsaw June 27, 2012.
○ US vs. Germany: The “Gentleman’s Agreement” Is Crumbling
Another Democrat who bears responsibility of where the world is today is Zbigniew Brzezinski as I recently wrote. It seems Obama has been comforted to follow the same doctrine for regime change with soft ‘covert’ power. The mess isn’t less horrific in the greater Middle East. I’m horrified, Obama and his gang has now focused on the Ukraine and Russia to do more of the same. God forbid!
One point of advise of the old war criminal: “Only start an action you are capable to see through to the end, and can accomplish the fixed goal.”
Cities under ISIS control
My advise: Get the U.N. Security Council permanent members to join in a military endeavor to seal the Jordanian border with Iraq and Syria and create a terrorist free zone linked to Kurdish Mosul. [Part can be a “DEAD” zone, anyone on the ground will be killed by drone or fighter jet] Once again this will be an expensive operation, great for military expenditure and jobs, but is needed to create a buffer zone. The Kurds should get their independent state with U.N. guarantee and let PM Maliki solve his problem created with the Sunnis of western Iraq. Creating a buffer zone from inside Jordan along the Syrian border to Turkey will secure our ally Israel who has only worsened affairs in the Middle East by yet another War of Atrition in Gaza.
○ Don’t Call Them Al Qaeda, Terror Coming from ISIS (aka AQI, IS)
Thanks. This guy sounds like bad news.
Great comment, Oui! I learned more background about Sikorski from that first paragraph than I’ve seen in perusing many of the usual haunts. (moa, saker, etc)
I’ll say again…..
We need a front page presence here at the frog pond to focus on these matters.
Yes we do.
But it probably won’t happen. If it does, it won’t be someone like Oui, someone who decidedly refuses to toe the DemocRatpublican/CIA/PermaGov line on what’s happening there.
Bet on it.
Booman can’t afford to do that.
He’s part of the PermaGov media now.
Bet on that as well.
AG
Thanks! Much appreciation for all the support here @BooMan too.
Several options
Cut all financial aide to Middle East and no military supplies.
Supply nothing but humanitarian support to Israel.
Declare War on entire Middle East
Thermal Nuclear War of Middle East
This all looks like a list that could be from the show War Games. Point is anything done but Humanitarian aide is useless. It will just lead to more killing. The only way it stops if ALL countries do the same thing refuse to give any kind of Military support to the parties involved. If the world wide communities cut of those supplies the fighting will continue without modern weaponry or cease.
Being it is the Middle East I would not be surprised if they continued via sling shots, rock throwing, knives and hand to hand.
They seem to love to kill each other sad to say.
I’ve heard this one on the street. It will be a viable option if someone devises a way to remove radioactivity from the oil wells.
Colloquially expressed in these parts as “turn the whole area to glass”.
John Oliver had a piece about why that’s not a practical option for the US.
John Oliver: Nuclear Weapons
These parts too.
People in the middle east don’t love to kill each other more than anyone else. The reality is much of the funding for their conflict comes from outside the middle east. There’s always about 30% of any population that is batshit nuts. Give ’em free guns, and guess what you get.
Good grief, look at Germany. A bloodthirsty killing machine has transformed into a bunch of pacifists in under a century. Thinking that people in the middle east are not capable of change – when the human race is genetically one of the most homogenous mammal species – is simply not realistic.
And if anyone here doesn’t think a lot of this is driven by extreme poverty they’re not paying attention. The fear and (yes, I’ll say it) paranoia present in Israeli society today has to be in part due to the poverty of the surrounding arab populations and the inequalities in Israel itself. Just like in America’s lily-white suburbs, impoverished neighborhoods and populations stoke the imagination and drive irrational and often destructive policies. People see someone else suffering, and some people want to help – but many others become afraid and reactionary.
This is such an important factor driving the SCALE of the Chaos. What would be minor dustups, get transformed into swollen tornadoes.
The memes holding the public delusions together for The Powers That Be (TPTB) are failing. Even though the significant majority of ordinary citizens (US) might entertain a certain notion in their minds, like “Assad gassed his people” or “Israel needs to defend itself” or “Oh! Putin is such a dictator!” or “Ukrainian separatists shot down MH-17”, the fact is that the swift and specific pointing to the likely real scenario by multiple and interactive investigators undermines the power of the propaganda. The house of cards is crumbling.
Yeah, unlike “civilized” people in the US that love to make the weapons and earn the profits that makes all their killing of each other easier. And when they don’t or won’t do it, “we” love to enter their countries halfway around the world from us and do the killing for them.
“The whole Middle East is just an appalling cauldron of violence and disaster” is a great line. It is unfortunately quite true.
Unfortunately, I think the Middle East is so drenched in violence that even the best response probably has us killing people, which always means some innocent people. Things are just really bad over there right now.
My thinking on this is that we should really push to marginalize the right wing axis spanning Egypt, SA, the US and Israel. The way we do this is to make friends with Iran (de facto marginalizing their right wing in the process). We’ve already started this, but we can also do it in the field. We have JSOC in Iraq next to Revolutionary Guards. Make friends. Get to know their operational command at a personal level. Seek to connect through to what we’re doing through the Secretary of State’s office.
Simultaneously, establish fortified JSOC bases in Kurdistan and run deep incursions in to ISIS controlled territory. Take out specific individual targets with human elements. Realize that drones are best used for reconnaissance. Just focus on killing ISIS leadership with Special Ops and direct the search for a better long term solution diplomatically.
This pours us in a position to directly damage ISIS, help the Kurds and work creatively worth Iran and hopefully, Turkey.
Here’s the rub. If there is a country in the Middle East that we should be seeking regime change in, it’s Saudi Arabia. Some bright ideas here would be advantageous.
Anyway, that’s what I would do.
Yes, it is.
And who is to blame?
As whomever/whatever “Osama Bin Laden” really was wrote in 2004:
The Great Game…the Great Big, Hottest-Thing Ever Blood-For-Oil Game…has been going on in the region for over 100 years. Read T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom for an inside look at the very beginnings of the story. It has not stopped for even a minute since that time, and the destruction that is happening there now…the senseless, vicious destruction…is due entirely to the economic imperialist actions of the U.S., Britain and the other Western European powers during that time.
A hard truth.
Hard for the people of U.S. to accept.
But accept it we must or else this destruction is eventually going to reach our shores in ways that will make 9/11 look like a pillow fight.
Bet on it.
Malcolm X was right. That’s why he had to go down.
The chickens always come home to roost, eventually.
Bet on it.
You don’t want to see that happen?
Neither do I, but if we do not in some way rise up against our controllers…electorally if at all possible…then a rain of lethal chickenshit will eventually commence here just as it has in the Middle East for 100 years.
Watch.
You been warned.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
the stupid rooster again?
Stupid is as stupid sees.
AG
it can’t roost because it has no claws