The big problem right now, is, of course, in Iraq – again. The President is doing the right thing at this point but it still seems short sighted. His plan to supply the Kurdish people trapped on Sinidar Mountain with food and water is a no brainer These are the people who helped us and were loyal to us when we first invaded Iraq and their military arm, the Peshmerga,, are our main hope of putting together a ground force in that region.
On the other hand the idea that sending out two planes with a couple of bombs is kind of comic. So they drop the bombs and they knock out a couple of jeeploads of ISIS fighters. All that does is piss off the ISIS forces. It’s like throwing a rock at a guy with a machine gun. What we should do, if we are going to do anything at all, is really put the fear of God into these true believers. Put every plane from every carrier in the area into the air and just bomb and strafe the living hell out of every ISIS operation in sight. A large percentage of the ISIS troops are not in towns but in the kinds of areas that make them sitting ducks for air attack. They have been able to operate with impunity because they have had no air-based opposition. Give them what they need. Turn their camps back into dust.
Watching the talking heads, one finds that there is a distinct lack of consensus on what we should be doing and what’s even more interesting, is that existing opinions seem to be based on polls not intelligence. Depending on polls to guide anything, in as complicated a situation as this, is ludicrous. 99%, to use a polling figure, of the people being polled, have no idea of the entire picture, so their opinions, although sometimes strongly held, are meaningless. So what to do? Maybe a little historical background is in order.
This is the place where most readers zone out, but the history of this region, shows specifically, why it is such a mess and why most options are limited.
There was a time when the Middle East was a place of great civilizations, but war, religious conflict and the climate, have, over the centuries, turned it into a wasteland of ignored human potential. For good or bad it sits on top of an ocean of oil, so when that poisonous substance was discovered in the 1800’s, the rush was on by European powers to extend their spheres of influence, much as they had in Africa and India to this hapless desert. For the most part the British, French, Belgians and Dutch, with assists from other countries divided up this huge area. A few individual kingdoms kept their sovereignty, but most succumbed to the arms and influence of Europe. That began to dissolve when the European nations realized that the corporations, that had taken over commerce, could more than hold their own without overt military assistance and because of the cost of keeping forces in these far flung lands, something that we have yet to lean, they withdrew, leaving behind a horrendous mess of false nations, unrealistic borders and incompetent, sycophant dictators and religious fanatics warring on each other.
It is this mess that we are now trying to unravel, but we have not had the resolve to demand that our European allies, those same nations that made this mess, help us with the process.
Our foreign policy, and I’m not speaking about Obama’s foreign policy but our nation’s foreign policy ever since WWII and probably before, has been one continual disaster, dictated by foreign developed fascism and communism, American greed for oil and various corporate needs that have taken precedence over any national need.
Why are we the only ones that are doing anything right now in Iraq? Where are the English, the French and the other NATO nations that caused this mess in the first place. Well, the Brits are sending some food and the French, as always, are promising much but have delivered nothing. We had nothing to do developing the Middle East and now we have nothing to gain from it. We have our own oil, which is the only reason anyone in the world had anything to do with this rats nest of religious fanatics and petty dictators anyway.
Everyone in the world turns to the United States every time there is some kind of military or social problem anywhere in the world and then when we try to help, especially where there is fighting, everyone has someone to hate and it’s us.
So why are we still there? Because as Colin Powell told George Bush, you broke it, you own it. You own 25 million people, their aspirations and their fate. So now Obama, despite his opposition to the war has accepted this responsibility, which is more than any of the neo-cons are willing to do. As Obama said in a speech when he was a senator, voting against this war; “It’s a dumb war and our country was led into it by dumb men.”Unfortunately one of those dumb menb, Dick Cheney, still doesn’t realize how wrong they all were and continues to hawk up his lying phlegm all over the tune.
So why are we back involved? The ISIS forces have announced that they will wipe out the Yazidi people. That’s genocide. That means that we have to do something serious to protect our friends, the Yazidis. The best way is to wipe out the ISIS forces and as stated above this is the perfect kind of warfare to accomplish that.
But why are we alone in this fight? Where is the UN? Where are the European nations that benefit from the oil here? Where are the Arab nations that stand to gain from peace in this land like Saudi Arabia and Egypt? They all have armies. Why aren’t they sending troops here to help with a situation that they all caused and that they will all benefit from more than us.
Peter van Buren has an excellent article in Reader Supported News, about why we shouldn’t be using air strikes against the ISIS troops in Iraq. Given all he says, I disagree- somewhat. You have an advancing army, bent on genocide. If they are not stopped now, when they are primarily in the field, they will get into cities where they will be impossible to root out without significant civilian casualties. We see huge shots of military columns in the open field and crossing bridges. Strike now, cut their forces and especially their vehicles and supplies demolish them in the field before they get into the cities and then we will be at a negotiating point.
But what has happened to the Peshmerga, the Kurdish military force that was supposed to be so good? No sign of them has been seen as their fellow Kurds are sacrificed to ISIS.? Well, the answer turned out to be quite simple and as usual it was the result of our own stupidity We trained the hell out of the Peshmerga but we didn’t arm them to fight a real war We didn’t want the Shiites to get all bent out of shape and think that we were supporting a possible Kurdish rebellion so we just didn’t give the Kurds the weapons they would need to engage in a fight- even though they were the only people in Iraq who sided with us.
It’s pretty clear that a big part of the problem in Iraq was Maliki, that the guy we put in office. He was the wrong guy. Now we have to get him out and put in someone who will act to bring the Sunnis and Shiites together. Of course if you have any knowledge of the place, you are laughing yourself sick and calling me a moron for making that statement because there is no such person. There hasn’t been for a couple of thousand years. What makes anyone think we will find such a person now?
Another part of the problem has been that our people who were involved in the war, when it was going on, had no idea what they were talking about. The wife of the American commander at the end of the war, spent time with Martha Raddatz talking about how we had helped that nation and its people, about how much we had done for them. What the hell was she looking at? We destroyed that nation. Sure it had a dictator but at least there was a country that sort of functioned. Now there is nothing but ruins and religious hatred. Only an organization as brain dead and religiously fanatic as ISIS would want it. Oh yeah,,, and us.
Dick Durbin got it right. We can help the Kurds, we can save the Yazidis, we can carpet bomb the ISIS troops and we can destroy their military capability. What we can’t do is construct a government in that country that will know how to rule.
Then the idiot from the Island, Peter King speaks. He claims that ISIS is a direct threat to the US. What, he’s waiting for them to roll their LSTs up onto East Hampton beach? The one thing that King may have right is that we should use massive air attacks. But just to prove that he really is brain dead, King announces that he wants us to depend on the Iraqi army. What army? Where the hell has King been? The reason ISIS is so well armed is that they just beat the hell out of an army that would not fight.
All the talking heads speak to the fact that ISIS is a threat to all of the Middle East. Okay, where the hell are the nations of the Middle East? Why aren’t Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, etc doing something about ISIS. Maybe if the leaders of these oil rich kingdoms spent a little less on fancy cars and hookers and a little more on national defense, they’d be able get into this and we’d all be better off.
People keep trying to draw a parallel between what we didn’t do in Syria and what we have already done and what we may do in Iraq. But the basic bottom lines are so different that it is a fool’s errand. We had no involvement in Syria. We caused the mess in Iraq. We had no knowledge as to whom we should be supporting in Syria. In fact, if we had done what most of our people wanted us to do, we would have armed the ISIS forces. In Iraq we absolutely know who to back and why. The problem in Iraq is to get rid of Maliki. The problem in Syria was that Abbas was a bad guy but he was the legitimate leader of the country.
The Right’s argument that Obama didn’t end the war in Iraq but that he pulled out before the war was over is completely false. This is not a continuation of the war in Iraq. This is an invasion by a foreign force, based in Syria, that was getting its head handed to it by Abbas and just moved over a non-existent border into a country next to it that was weak and an easy target. This is a whole new war and the sooner we understand that the better chance we will have to win it.
The big problem right now, is, of course, in Iraq – again. The President is doing the right thing at this point but it still seems short sighted. His plan to supply the Kurdish people trapped on Sinidar Mountain with food and water is a no brainer These are the people who helped us and were loyal to us when we first invaded Iraq and their military arm, the Peshmerga,, are our main hope of putting together a ground force in that region.
On the other hand the idea that sending out two planes with a couple of bombs is kind of comic. So they drop the bombs and they knock out a couple of jeeploads of ISIS fighters. All that does is piss off the ISIS forces. It’s like throwing a rock at a guy with a machine gun. What we should do, if we are going to do anything at all, is really put the fear of God into these true believers. Put every plane from every carrier in the area into the air and just bomb and strafe the living hell out of every ISIS operation in sight. A large percentage of the ISIS troops are not in towns but in the kinds of areas that make them sitting ducks for air attack. They have been able to operate with impunity because they have had no air-based opposition. Give them what they need. Turn their camps back into dust.
Watching the talking heads, one finds that there is a distinct lack of consensus on what we should be doing and what’s even more interesting, is that existing opinions seem to be based on polls not intelligence. Depending on polls to guide anything, in as complicated a situation as this, is ludicrous. 99%, to use a polling figure, of the people being polled, have no idea of the entire picture, so their opinions, although sometimes strongly held, are meaningless. So what to do? Maybe a little historical background is in order.
This is the place where most readers zone out, but the history of this region, shows specifically, why it is such a mess and why most options are limited.
There was a time when the Middle East was a place of great civilizations, but war, religious conflict and the climate, have, over the centuries, turned it into a wasteland of ignored human potential. For good or bad it sits on top of an ocean of oil, so when that poisonous substance was discovered in the 1800’s, the rush was on by European powers to extend their spheres of influence, much as they had in Africa and India to this hapless desert. For the most part the British, French, Belgians and Dutch, with assists from other countries divided up this huge area. A few individual kingdoms kept their sovereignty, but most succumbed to the arms and influence of Europe. That began to dissolve when the European nations realized that the corporations, that had taken over commerce, could more than hold their own without overt military assistance and because of the cost of keeping forces in these far flung lands, something that we have yet to lean, they withdrew, leaving behind a horrendous mess of false nations, unrealistic borders and incompetent, sycophant dictators and religious fanatics warring on each other.
It is this mess that we are now trying to unravel, but we have not had the resolve to demand that our European allies, those same nations that made this mess, help us with the process.
Our foreign policy, and I’m not speaking about Obama’s foreign policy but our nation’s foreign policy ever since WWII and probably before, has been one continual disaster, dictated by foreign developed fascism and communism, American greed for oil and various corporate needs that have taken precedence over any national need.
Why are we the only ones that are doing anything right now in Iraq? Where are the English, the French and the other NATO nations that caused this mess in the first place. Well, the Brits are sending some food and the French, as always, are promising much but have delivered nothing. We had nothing to do developing the Middle East and now we have nothing to gain from it. We have our own oil, which is the only reason anyone in the world had anything to do with this rats nest of religious fanatics and petty dictators anyway.
Everyone in the world turns to the United States every time there is some kind of military or social problem anywhere in the world and then when we try to help, especially where there is fighting, everyone has someone to hate and it’s us.
So why are we still there? Because as Colin Powell told George Bush, you broke it, you own it. You own 25 million people, their aspirations and their fate. So now Obama, despite his opposition to the war has accepted this responsibility, which is more than any of the neo-cons are willing to do. As Obama said in a speech when he was a senator, voting against this war; “It’s a dumb war and our country was led into it by dumb men.”Unfortunately one of those dumb menb, Dick Cheney, still doesn’t realize how wrong they all were and continues to hawk up his lying phlegm all over the tune.
So why are we back involved? The ISIS forces have announced that they will wipe out the Yazidi people. That’s genocide. That means that we have to do something serious to protect our friends, the Yazidis. The best way is to wipe out the ISIS forces and as stated above this is the perfect kind of warfare to accomplish that.
But why are we alone in this fight? Where is the UN? Where are the European nations that benefit from the oil here? Where are the Arab nations that stand to gain from peace in this land like Saudi Arabia and Egypt? They all have armies. Why aren’t they sending troops here to help with a situation that they all caused and that they will all benefit from more than us.
Peter van Buren has an excellent article in Reader Supported News, about why we shouldn’t be using air strikes against the ISIS troops in Iraq. Given all he says, I disagree- somewhat. You have an advancing army, bent on genocide. If they are not stopped now, when they are primarily in the field, they will get into cities where they will be impossible to root out without significant civilian casualties. We see huge shots of military columns in the open field and crossing bridges. Strike now, cut their forces and especially their vehicles and supplies demolish them in the field before they get into the cities and then we will be at a negotiating point.
But what has happened to the Peshmerga, the Kurdish military force that was supposed to be so good? No sign of them has been seen as their fellow Kurds are sacrificed to ISIS.? Well, the answer turned out to be quite simple and as usual it was the result of our own stupidity We trained the hell out of the Peshmerga but we didn’t arm them to fight a real war We didn’t want the Shiites to get all bent out of shape and think that we were supporting a possible Kurdish rebellion so we just didn’t give the Kurds the weapons they would need to engage in a fight- even though they were the only people in Iraq who sided with us.
It’s pretty clear that a big part of the problem in Iraq was Maliki, that the guy we put in office. He was the wrong guy. Now we have to get him out and put in someone who will act to bring the Sunnis and Shiites together. Of course if you have any knowledge of the place, you are laughing yourself sick and calling me a moron for making that statement because there is no such person. There hasn’t been for a couple of thousand years. What makes anyone think we will find such a person now?
Another part of the problem has been that our people who were involved in the war, when it was going on, had no idea what they were talking about. The wife of the American commander at the end of the war, spent time with Martha Raddatz talking about how we had helped that nation and its people, about how much we had done for them. What the hell was she looking at? We destroyed that nation. Sure it had a dictator but at least there was a country that sort of functioned. Now there is nothing but ruins and religious hatred. Only an organization as brain dead and religiously fanatic as ISIS would want it. Oh yeah,,, and us.
Dick Durbin got it right. We can help the Kurds, we can save the Yazidis, we can carpet bomb the ISIS troops and we can destroy their military capability. What we can’t do is construct a government in that country that will know how to rule.
Then the idiot from the Island, Peter King speaks. He claims that ISIS is a direct threat to the US. What, he’s waiting for them to roll their LSTs up onto East Hampton beach? The one thing that King may have right is that we should use massive air attacks. But just to prove that he really is brain dead, King announces that he wants us to depend on the Iraqi army. What army? Where the hell has King been? The reason ISIS is so well armed is that they just beat the hell out of an army that would not fight.
All the talking heads speak to the fact that ISIS is a threat to all of the Middle East. Okay, where the hell are the nations of the Middle East? Why aren’t Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, etc doing something about ISIS. Maybe if the leaders of these oil rich kingdoms spent a little less on fancy cars and hookers and a little more on national defense, they’d be able get into this and we’d all be better off.
People keep trying to draw a parallel between what we didn’t do in Syria and what we have already done and what we may do in Iraq. But the basic bottom lines are so different that it is a fool’s errand. We had no involvement in Syria. We caused the mess in Iraq. We had no knowledge as to whom we should be supporting in Syria. In fact, if we had done what most of our people wanted us to do, we would have armed the ISIS forces. In Iraq we absolutely know who to back and why. The problem in Iraq is to get rid of Maliki. The problem in Syria was that Abbas was a bad guy but he was the legitimate leader of the country.
The Right’s argument that Obama didn’t end the war in Iraq but that he pulled out before the war was over is completely false. This is not a continuation of the war in Iraq. This is an invasion by a foreign force, based in Syria, that was getting its head handed to it by Abbas and just moved over a non-existent border into a country next to it that was weak and an easy target. This is a whole new war and the sooner we understand that the better chance we will have to win it.