Gathering Storm in the Mideast

[jordan179]

As many may now be aware, a radical Islamofascist organization, ISIS, which had been fighting in the Syrian Civil War, has now invaded Iraq.  With amazing speed, they have vanquished one Iraqi military formation after another, and are wreaking dreadful atrocities on the helpless civilian population.  Mosul and Tikrit have fallen.  Advancing ISIS

Comments

[skarman]

Personally, the US and the rest of the world needs to stay out of it

[jordan179]

Personally, the US and the rest of the world needs to stay out of it.

It's certainly most short-term convenient for us to stay out of it. I'm not sure exactly how we get to decide for "the rest of the world."

The US should now, step back and let the rest of the world deal with this.

We are, in point of fact doing this. And "the rest of the world" is also stepping back, save for the parts of it which are fishing in troubled waters. And that is precisely why a major war is becoming inevitable.

It is time for the US to actually work on cleaning up the mess in their own yard.

Oh, I'm sure a lot of that will take care of itself when the war starts and we can make money hand-over-first as we did from 1939-41, and perhaps keep the fighting at arm's length as we did from 1941-45 (if we're lucky again). Of course, we live now in a world with nuclear weapons, so the equivalent of the U-Boat raids off our coast may be a bit more bloody for us, but we're a big country. Most of us will survive. The heavy dying will be done by Little

[skarman]

In case you've missed it, in that part of the world, heavy dying as you call it, has been going on for centuries. If it isn't clan against clan, it's tribe against tribe, Sunni against Shiite against Coptic, Arab against everybody else ad infinitum. Like I wrote earlier, the only time in recent memory that things were rather calm, was under the rule of guys like Saddam, Muammar, Hosni and the Assads

[skarman]

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

We've become complacent because we've not been under the threat of the gun. We have zealots, religious and political trying to enforce their will on us. The latter is the bigger threat for they are the ones willing to bend our necks towards the former. I say we deal with the latter ones first. Hopefully, before the former manage to perpetrate more 9/11 style attacks, though maybe those need to happen to open people's eyes.

Personally, I'd have turned the whole area into glass already, notwithstanding that not everybody there is part of the evil permeating that region of the world. I'm that fed up with these people. THAT is my idea of "flattening them".

[whitetail]

Only Iran can stop ISIS now. If they don't, and soon, the Shi'a in Iraq will be slaughtered en masse, and the holy sites Najaf and Karbala will be reduced to rubble, never to rise again. The Persian ayatollahs will not/cannot allow this to happen. Iran. Must. Act. Now.

[ford_prefect42]

I am not seeing the downside to the destruction of Muslim holy locations. There are entirely too many of them.

[whitetail]

*chuckle* Not an issue for me, either. Just sayin' Iran might have a problem with it. Let 'em all kill each other off AFAIC.

[ford_prefect42]

My family a while back started referring to the population of the middle east as "Armorfiends", from the "Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax" a species so belligerent that the best way of dealing with them is to simply not be in the room, as, if left alone, they will eventually resort to beating themselves up.

[tagryn]

Fog of war. We don't *know* that these were regular IA units that were routed in Mosul; according to http://home.comcast.net/~djyae/site/?/blog/view/147/ they may well have been Iraqi Federal Police, which don't have nearly the same reputation as the regular army or the peshmarga

[jordan179]

It sounds like ISIS has been too busy fighting to do much in the way of atrocities recently, though they certainly have a reputation for it.

They boast of their atrocities. They release video of them on the Internet. The main difference between ISIS and the main Al Qaeda is that ISIS is more honest.

There is nothing preventing ISIS from taking prisoners at any stage of the conflict and then doing them in as an auto-de-fe, with cameras rolling. They've done it before and will do it agani.

I wouldn't give the Turkish ambassadorial captives good odds, for example.

Which will give Turkey not only an excuse but virtually a responsibility to intervene in the war. Turkey may well parlay this into a conquest of Iraqi Kurdistan. And Turkey and Iran head up rival factions of the lunacy-contest that is Islam: Turkey is Sunni and the former seat of the Caliphate; Iran the standard-bearer for global Shit ... I mean Shiism.

That's not gonna end well.

That's not surprising, since they reportedly have a core of ex-Ba'athist professional

[eta_ta]

I knew when russian aggression in ukraine began, that it will not end in itself - the world waited for our so called President's reaction, and depending on it further events will proceed.
now we see consequence of his inability to govern. the history turned to a dark side.

[sianmink]

Yeah how'd that civilian disarmament work out for you there, Iraq?

[ford_prefect42]

Like.