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| Iraq |
| The U.S.'s Timid Third Iraq War |
| 2014-08-12 |
| [TIME] "Very effective," Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told news hounds Monday in Sydney, Australia. "Very temporary," Army Lieut. General William Mayville, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said later in the day at the Pentagon. The conflicting signals were a sign of an Administration determined to do just enough to avert a humanitarian catastrophe without launching a third U.S.-Iraq war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ... the current version of al-Qaeda in Iraq, just as blood-thirsty and well-beloved as the original... , or ISIL). While F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s dropped 500-pound bombs on targets like artillery pieces, mortars and armored vehicles, aided by MQ-1 Predators and their 20-pound warheads, they didn't appear to do much to change the situation on the ground. The U.S. Air Force and Navy are flying up to 100 attack, reconnaissance and support missions a day over Iraq. Mayville's briefing was as perplexing and unsatisfying as the 19 "I'm very concerned about the threat posed by ISIL in Iraq and in the region," he said. "They're very well-organized. They are very well equipped. They coordinate their operations. And they have thus far shown the ability to attack on multiple axes. This is not insignificant." So what is the U.S. military prepared to do to deal with this threat? "There are no plans," Mayville said, "to expand the current air campaign beyond the current self-defense activities." The U.S. military can only do what it is told to do, but the disconnect between threat and response seems especially wide right now. The goals are limited to rescuing the thousands (or tens of thousands; the Pentagon isn't sure) of Yazidis trapped on, in and around Sinjar Mountain in northwestern Iraq, and to protect the Kurdish city of Erbil, where a small number of U.S. personnel, including about 40 recently-dispatched military advisers, are based. Warplanes launching the strikes come from air bases in Kuwait and Qatar and from the USS George H.W. Bush in the Persian Gulf, a carrier named for the President who launched the first U.S. war against Iraq in 1991. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #6 As a OWG Globalist, the Bammer is doing his actions intentionally, wid a larger pciture or agenda in mind. Again, GLOBALISM = HOW MUCH CAN THE "SOLE" SUPERPOWER USA GIVE UP, OR FAR CAN THE US GEOPOL OR MILPOL FALL BACK OR RETREAT, ETC, WIDOUT BEING EIXSTENIALLY THREATENED BY WANNABES, OR EVEN BY FELLOW, GLOBALIST-DESIRED, FUTURE OWG CO-SUPERPOWERS. HOW MUCH IS "TOO MUCH", HOW FAR IS "TOO FAR", ETC. FOR THE SUPERPOWER US TO WILFULLY + UNILATERALLY, WEIRDLY-N-MYSTERIOUSLY BUT OF COURSE ONLY COINCIDENTALLY + PCORRECTLY-DENIABLY, GIVE UP OR TURN OVER TO OWG GLOBAL FEDERAL UNION-LEADING CO-SUPERPOWERS??? The ordinary Militant = Field Forces of the ISIS + similar MilTerr Groups have known only perennial poverty, Madrassa-led schooling in Islamic Fundamentalism-Radicalism since their pre-teens or childhood, + ABOVE ALL SURVIVAL BY BRUTE FORCE + VIOLENCE - THEY KNOW OR CARE LITTLE, NOTHING? ABOUT MARXISM OR IVY LEAGUE POLITICAL INTELLECTALISM-SCIENTIFISM. * WORLD NEWS > [Ria Novosti] US AIRSTRIKES TO AGGRAVATE RADICLA ISLAMISM - NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST [Ivan Eland], whom also argues that US Airstrikes could poten foment the rise of a much more violent or dsangerous Islamist MilTerr group than the ISIS/ISIL. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2014-08-12 22:59 |
| #5 Obviously, no one in the State Department or DoD ever read Machiavelli. They avoided discord and now the enemy has picked the time and the place of the war. |
| Posted by: Bill Clinton 2014-08-12 18:43 |
| #4 Shia aren't willing to fight anything other than Sunni, at least in Iraq. That much was learned over there years ago. They've had training, and discarded it. Their Arab+Shia "culture" promotes nepotism, corruption, and tribalism, as well as cowardice. The Shia Arabs in Iraq are for the most part paper tigers, and useless. They will ultimately need Persians to rescue them from the Sunni. The Kurds, if logistics can be figured out, are in some pretty difficult terrain, very tightly secured, and are sort-of a "Switzerland" in that they are armed to the teeth, in tough terrain, and motivated & trained to defend it to the last man. Taking Kurdistan is far more trouble than its worth, as ISIS is finding out: when they break thru the buffer areas and run up to the actual Kurdish zones, the Kurds don't retreat from there and they get stopped hard. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2014-08-12 15:34 |
| #3 The Shi'a are more than willing to fight. They have militias that are of some minimum quality. They don't have the logistics, training or leadership to go up against the ISIS right now. That comes with time and desperation. Hate to say it but I think Iraq is lost. Not sure if/how the Kurds survive. They might need official Turkish protection. The Shi'a will get official Iranian protection. Champ will then spend two years telling us all how it was someone else's fault. Maybe he'll fire Hagel. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2014-08-12 13:34 |
| #2 The difference maker in the North is the supply and continuous resupply of heavy weapons and ammunition to the Kurds. The difference in the south? Nothing will happen as long as the Shia continue to deceive themselves that their corruption and nepotism are proper ways to do things, and they continue freezing out the Sunnis and abusing them in the name of payback for Saddam/Baathists. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2014-08-12 12:00 |
| #1 Timidity in foreign affairs and military operations brings more war, not peace. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2014-08-12 11:58 |