ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

[ICantSpellDawg]

What really ticks me off are the reports of ISIS forces using up-armored humvees and other gear that we "sold" (gave, really) to the Iraqi Army. What's the point of giving them all that gear only so they can drop it once and run away?

it will be more of a challenge to to take it from them next time

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The USA -- reacting to a combination of war weariness, financial distress, and a veritable barrage of (often justifiable) criticism of the tenor or its actions -- has more or less quit being the de facto "world policeman." Since many (most?) cultures do not inherently respect the rule of law as something worthwhile of itself, and absent a policemen to encourage order, the result is all sorts of parties pursuing their agenda without much regard for the opinions of others. And why shouldn't they? It is logical to do so when you know that you can get away with it and that someone might change the policy back later on -- get while the getting is good.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Im loving this. I'm not even going to begin to attack the hasty withdrawal from Iraq by this admin for political reasons, because it will just go in a cycle blaming Bush and the neocons for destabilizing the nation 10 years ago through invasion.

What can be blamed is US isolationism and the overt cowardice of the Admin when faced with the humanitarian crisis in Syria. We couldn't even enforce our own prohibition on chemical weapons use as pretext to exterminate ISIL and Assad's forces while propping up the FSA and Kurdish forces. Inaction and cowardice is responsible for this. I hope that everyone who was against intervention in Syria is happy with the outcome that you have chosen.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Really? You open up with a disclaimer about how you don't want to get dragged into a discussion about 10-year-old policy, and finish with the premise that intervention and propping up more untested warlords would be a good idea? Are you trying to be a walking advertisement for refusing to learn from history?

What I've learned is that situations like Syria, Bosnia, Libya are ideal for us to get involved in, while countries who are irksome but not spiralling out of control should just be undermined. This is what happens when you ignore a catastrophe on the level of Syria - it spreads.

If I could go back, I still would have supported Afghanistan, but would have tried to find other ways of undermining Saddam.

[Viking]

Since this offensive started, I've quietly rooted for the insurgents. Not ISIS, mind you. I both think and hope that ISIS would be defeated by local militias once the national Iraqi army does not seem like a threat anymore. Reading this increases my faith in this scenario:

The MCIR [Military Councils of Iraqi Revolutionaries] claims that overall, its fighters are the most significant element in the revolt, with tribal militants in second place, and ISIS only third despite the media attention they command.

When Sunni rebels took over the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, in January, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki asked the Kurds to send peshmerga forces to help drive them out, sources say.

But the request was turned down. The Kurdish leadership's message to the MCIR conversely was that Irbil would not be against the Sunnis taking the road of establishing their own autonomous area, following the lead of Kurdistan itself.

That would clearly not apply if ISIS emerged as the dominant force in self-administering Sunni areas. Its philosophy and practices are so extreme that it has even been disavowed by its parent leadership, the international al-Qaeda movement headed by Osama Bin Laden's successor Ayman al-Zawahiri.

A future scenario where the Kurdish forces helped "moderate" elements such as the MCIR to oust ISIS is not hard to envisage.

I am not sure what an autonmous Eastern Iraq would want to do, whether to join Syria, be independent or be one of 2-3 federal states within Iraq. Their current goal seems to be to topple Maliki's government, which I can't see much good coming out of. I wish them bad luck on that point.

[Husar]

What I've learned is that situations like Syria, Bosnia, Libya are ideal for us to get involved in, while countries who are irksome but not spiralling out of control should just be undermined. This is what happens when you ignore a catastrophe on the level of Syria - it spreads.

If I could go back, I still would have supported Afghanistan, but would have tried to find other ways of undermining Saddam.

You mean stable countries should be undermined to get them to a level of instability where you think an intervention is feasible?

[Fisherking]

Meantime another SNAFU.

http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/06/200-u-...fLuq3XwBbZW.01

Poor bastards. I hope they are good.

[Fisherking]

And what is with Iraq to the rescue? This mess does not bode well on any front.

The US is either caught flat footed on intel or involved in it. It is beyond belief or comprehension.

[a completely inoffensive name]

When will we see the picture of Iraqi refugees surrounding the last chopper out of Baghdad?

[Pannonian]

Balad is a big base, and if they take it then Baghdad is in fairly imminent danger. Its really pretty painful watching Iraq fall apart after all we did. The US casualties from the Iraq war still dwarf the casualties from the Afghan war, in terms of dead and wounded. All those elections we provided security for, all those check-points we manned, all those meetings with angry Sheiks, all those big brief-cases full of money for placating the tribal elders, all those up-armored Humvees, MRAPs, even Abrams that we gave to the Iraqi Army. All those 18-hour days of driving around the Baghdad ghettos, doing the jobs of the police who were too busy screwing their own people over to do their jobs right... All of it wasted because the Maliki government was more interested in sectarian power-grabbing than in inclusive government. This freakin' sucks, but they have to deal with it on thier own. If we back anyone else with money (and we probably should not..), it should be the Kurds. Not giving them their own state from the start was a huge mistake.

And I maintain the same argument that I made in 2003, that Iraq was a problem that should have been left to Saddam rather than taking it on ourselves, and that the biggest problem with the whole affair wasn't that it was ethically wrong or founded on lies, but that it was so plainly stupid and unnecessary. I'm not so bothered by my country's decisionmakers being liars and cheats, but I do expect more of them than that they should be idiots who waste our money for a lack of gain that was obvious from the beginning.