2014 in Iraq

apparently Biden is the Admin's point man for negotiating a 3-region partition, so that'll end well.

"We only have three counties in Delaware, works for us!"

wtf @ return of Chalabi

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, July 1, 2014 3:48 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

CHALABI, THE RETURN OF

I have become somewhat shamefully obsessed with an ISIS propaganda video called Clanging of the Swords pt. 4. Ultra-high production values, bleak and graphic violence (mostly against Iraqi army officers/personnel), and some surprisingly impressive speechmaking. Overall very high-level and effective propaganda and helped me understand better what's going on there, although also very dark and disturbing. It's googleable, not going to post it, view at own risk.

meanwhile, this frontline is very good:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/losing-iraq/

I've seen some of those. They have GOT to get better theme music.

The theme music in pt. 4 is kind of good. One of my friends said it sounded like Islamic Boys II Men.

those videos are intense

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) took over Iraq's biggest dam unopposed by Kurdish fighters, who also lost three towns and an oilfield on Sunday to the Sunni militant group, witnesses said, according to Reuters news agency.

Control of the dam could give ISIS, which has threatened to march on Baghdad, the ability to flood major cities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9WrvxhPw_k

i was watching a kind of boring one this morning alhamdulillah. i just started clanging of the swords iv. it's true this stuff is very engrossing.

I have watched it several times. The part that I find most impressive is the speech with the passport shredding, the one where the guy says something like "Oh you tyrants, do not think that just because we reject your citizenship that we will not return to your lands. We will return not with *this* but with *this* (kalishnikov)" etc. I was speculating that some of them probably have prop passports for those speeches. The effectiveness of something like this must be an incredible force multiplier -- you just need a handful of successful military operations on film involving what looked like no more than a few dozen fighters, plus some filmed executions, and you give off the impression of an unstoppable, fearless and terrifying fighting force who, nonetheless, will forgive you if only you reject brand x islam and join brand y islam.

One other thing -- I see a subtle appeal to loner video gamer types there -- kill with impunity in the name of allah.

that would explain the slo-mo replay edits of drive-by murders

bush iii (how am i doing morbs) approves airstrikes

u.s. imperialism serves stockhausen islamic jihad

All these airstrikes will do is buy a little time for the US government to gin up a revised Iraq policy. This would be easier if Iraq didn't have so much goddamned oil.

bring the war home ; )

http://media.cagle.com/107/2014/06/13/149717_600.jpg

yeah, we're dumbasses. doesn't help that we're all brainwashing ourselves and pretending we had nothing to do with this crisis.

The fact that we had a lot to do with this crisis only makes me feel more willing to support us trying to do something about it. It's only a matter of what we can do/whether we can do something without fucking things up worse IMO.

yeah, it's a tough situation we're in. but this is a tremendous challenge we made for ourselves that we have to take responsibility for. it's just frustrating seeing this line of thinking almost completely ignored.

check out Obama here quoted in the New York Times:

“The United States cannot and should not intervene every time there is a crisis in the world,” he said. But in this case, he added, “I believe the United States cannot turn a blind eye.”

Obama talks about this like it's some random event that popped up in some random part of the world, and we deserve a pat on our backs for helping out. Seriously, what the hell is that. I understand the politics of the situation are complex and ugly as hell, but this is just getting absurd.

I like how the major justification for not letting Erbil fall to ISIS is that we have omg a consulate in Erbil which we MUST DEFEND! Obama delivered that ridiculous line of reasoning with a perfectly straight face, too.

Yeah I find Obama's rhetoric on this very enervated and unsatisfying. I would imagine people on every part of the political spectrum do. It's like "We're just gonna go help some folks stranded on a mountain" -- no context, no sense of weight or responsibility.

somebody last night was saying "well we broke it, we bought it" and i was like ha remember when colin powell was saying that TWELVE YEARS AGO

Meaning what, because we backed Saddam? The first gulf war? The sanctions? All?

All.

it was meant as "well we ruined iraq by invading so we have to go back to fix it now"

"we need to fix what we broke, we owe it to these ppl" was basically the favorite liberal excuse for supporting the invasion in 2003.

More justifiable when Iraq is facing an actual crisis rather than a fictional one though.

Let's fix what we broke... by bombing the shit out of what's left of it.

barack obama -> iraq obama -> iraq obombya. where's my award.

If we could just turn back time and never have had any foreign involvement anywhere, life would be peachy.

if only we had never become a nation, then this would just be david cameron's problem

yeah, but we do bear responsibility for this particular set of circumstances, and i don't think we should just casually fling that out the window.

The circumstances in Iraq today are not entirely a consequence of US policy. Iraq had a long past before we arrived and tossed in our own poorly thought out contributions, such as backing Saddam, then fighting Saddam (but not overthrowing him), then overthrowing him and replacing him with our total (but predictable) incompetence for the job of occupation, then leaving after we realized we'd botched the job so badly there was no hope of fixing it (plus they threw us out).

We bear much responsibility for our many sins, but we didn't take a perfectly functional country and ruin it. Iraq was always an unstable nation since the day the modern borders were drawn after WWI.

ISIS seems like a regional threat though. They are openly expansionist, not just trying to take cities in Iraq and Syria.

My only feeble reason for supporting a toppling of Saddam in 2003 was to Do Right For the Kurds after Kissinger fucked them over in the Ford years and Poppy Bush, in a horrible moment, encouraged them to rebel against Saddam without either troop or air cover. Surprisingly, the normally clear-eyed Charles Pierce today supported this 'limited' incursion on similar grounds. Me, I'm tired of this shit.

You will be more tired of this shit in a year or two if it's not contained now.

If we could just turn back time and never have had any foreign involvement anywhere, life would be peachy.

― 'arry Goldman (Hurting 2), Friday, August 8, 2014 7:22 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe not so great in western europe

in a horrible moment, encouraged them to rebel against Saddam without either troop or air cover

was this the Kurds or the "Marsh Arabs" (ie. the Shiites)?

The rebellions were north and south. Bush said the following:

"There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: and that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations' resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations"

yeah, thanks

I thought that encouraging the Kurds would lead to problems with Turkey so the Shiites in the south were just forlorn hope.

::attempts to balance 6 spinning dishes::

You will be more tired of this shit in a year or two if it's not contained now.

What amount of resources do you think would be required for this?

The Cheney-Rumsfeld plan was just pump a bunch of oil and make the Iraqis pay the piper. You recall how well that turned out. What exactly is going on here that would be worth a couple trillion bucks to 'contain'? Not to mention all the deaths and casualties we'd inflict, and also suffer on our side. And how does it ever end?

what if more deaths and more casualties would happen if we did nothing, and the suffering too. inaction won't improve the situation.

Casualties and deaths we inflict are not the same as those that are inflicted without our participation. The suffering does not change, but the responsibility for it does.

"we"

Well, quite a lot of the responsibility is already yours, so...

"our"