2014 in Iraq

It really isn't much fun to argue the differences between Israel and ISIS in the midst of Israel bombing the shit out of Gaza and generally being a pretty difficult to defend country though.

Been reading calls for Obama and Cameron and others to create a Gulf War multi-country united entity against IS, but here's a NY Times take--

In another era, the campaign against ISIS might have merited the massed divisions and the soaring rhetoric of 2003. But this campaign is the step-child of that war.

The appetite for the fray has been drained by years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Has anything worthwhile and reality based been written about the motivations of British guys going to join ISIS?

Just seen summary items like this that don't get into the motivations really

http://www.newsweek.com/twice-many-british-muslims-fighting-isis-armed-forces-265865

it would have to be speculation anyway right? I would assume nobody is over there interviewing these dudes (for pretty clear reasons) at least not from the western press

I'm wondering what kind of propaganda videos the British volunteers were watching - did they all go over before the beheadings and sex slavery started (or when this was covered up, if it was) or are those things what they sign up for? Did they go ever in one group or is there a continuing flow of people? etc

Clanging of the Swords IV was really popular

The claim of 1500 "fighting for ISIS" looks deliberately misleading. There might be 1500 who have gone to fight in Syria, and that looks like a guess on Mahmood's part, but there's no way to tell who they are fighting for. It wasn't that long ago that ITV were running vaguely admiring pieces about second generation Syrians putting medical degrees on hold to join the effort to topple Assad.

Yeah, there was a Kurdish man on my local news last night going over to join the Pesh Merga, again presented fairly admiringly

well, we know for a fact that at least some english citizens are fighting for IS

Obviously, but not how many - which was what the article claimed to present.

uk media has definitely struggled with the war in syria which gives all sides the chance to throw some of the tropes back. is it true, as an assad regime official claimed on c4 news, that james foley was captured by the fsa & sold to isis?

Most reports have just said he was 'captured by a local warlord' who then joined up with ISIS but it doesn't sound like anyone is sure of the details.

it feels horrible to complain about the media in light of foley's sacrifice but i've been pretty disappointed w/ a lot of the mid east coverage lately. i have yet to see anything else like that Vice reporter who embedded w/ FSA and actually went on a sortie w/ them. maybe this foley situation is why -- it's just too dangerous to get close.

Yeah, and the level of money being invested in protecting them seems to have declined in proportion to the amount of money being spent on anything else newspaper-related. There have been a few articles post-Foley complaining about the reliance on freelancers and the failure to adequately support them.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BvkoKt6CAAECD50.jpg

the places i'd expect to be on that list but aren't i have to imagine are bc of almost no media presence (like nigeria? where apparently boko harem took over another city today?). i remember during the most recent M23 conflict in Goma is was almost impossible to find any in-depth coverage anywhere. i kept searching for video and ultimately found like 20 seconds of stock Goma footage in a BBC report.

surprised the US isn't on that list yet.

lol wat

but srsly, another one i'm surprised about - Mexico!

At least one journalist was killed in Russia this year, too.

Was there? I know of two Russian journalists who were killed but both inside Ukraine.

http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/08/21/hagel_isis_is_more_dangerous_than_al_qaeda

The group "is as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen. They're beyond just a terrorist group," Hagel said in response to a question about whether the Islamic State posed a similar threat to the United States as al Qaeda did before Sept. 11, 2001.

"They marry ideology, a sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess. They're tremendously well-funded. This is beyond anything that we've seen," Hagel said, adding that "the sophistication of terrorism and ideology married with resources now poses a whole new dynamic and a new paradigm of threats to this country."

It wasn't that long ago that ITV were running vaguely admiring pieces about second generation Syrians putting medical degrees on hold to join the effort to topple Assad.

― Wristy Hurlington (ShariVari), Thursday, 21 August 2014 21:48 (Yesterday)

lol quite

we've switched sides since tho

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stopped short of calling for U.S. military action in eastern Syria, an ISIS stronghold.
"Can they be defeated without addressing that part of the organization that resides in Syria? The answer is no," Dempsey said during the briefing at the Pentagon.
Repeatedly pushed by reporters about whether that meant operations against ISIS in Syria, Hagel said, "We're looking at all options."

from CNN http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/21/world/meast/iraq-crisis/

Maybe Assad can help out....or the moderate Syrian rebels or ....

They should ask hillary I hear she knows some people

that looks like a guess on Mahmood's part,

Of course, that guy is a complete fucking dimwit, a stick-a-red-rosette-on-a-donkey Labour troglodyte.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28910674

The UN has called for action to prevent what it says may be a possible massacre in the northern Iraqi town of Amerli.

Special representative Nickolay Mladenov says he is "seriously alarmed" by reports regarding the conditions in which the town's residents live.

The town, under siege by Islamic State for two months, has no electricity or drinking water, and is running out of food and medical supplies.

The majority of its residents are Turkmen Shia, seen as apostates by IS.

The Obama administration is considering seeking congressional authorization for military action against the Islamic State under a revamped counter­terrorism strategy President Obama announced last year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/range-of-options-to-combat-islamic-state-are-under-discussion-senior-official-says/2014/08/22/f745619a-2a2a-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html?tid=pm_world_pop

How many trillions we gonna flush down the toilet on this one...?

I'm torn between that view and well, wanting to help folks facing slaughter (which seems different to me than "Sadaam has nuclear weapons"), but I recognize what a complicated mess it is and that we can't help everyone and we have problems at home and just because Bush got us into a mess maybe we shouldn't feel a need to clean up his mission accomplished, and who are we to resolve Suni/Shia/Kurd issues that are also complicated by meddling of Iran, Saudia Arabia, Quatar and others....

have no idea what to do here. glad I'm not in charge. IS is an obvious horrible threat to everyone. not sure how bombing is going to stop them. not sure how to stop them.

I'm torn between that view and well, wanting to help folks facing slaughter (which seems different to me than "Sadaam has nuclear weapons")

Is it just me, or wasn't it once quite common to see convoys of white military vehicles from the UN going into situations like this and acting as a peacekeeping force? It seems like that doesn't happen anymore. Is that an accurate impression? And would a UN peacekeeping force be effective in western Iraq today?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bvgr7uGIEAAaTZv.jpg

The guy who beheaded James Foley is grime rapper L.Jinny (Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT1YDIV4lGE

in related news:
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/canadian-idol-contestant-acquitted-terrorism-25039115

It seems like Russia or China on the Security Council would prevent the UN from getting involved.

Meanwhile Iran prefers to influence things indirectly:

"The information about the presence of Iranian soldiers in Iraq is not correct. We don’t have a single Iranian soldier on Iraqi soil because Iraq does not need those soldiers." from Newsweek

Not sure Russia or China would block it. Peacekeepers are still active all over the place but tend to go in when the fighting has died down.

Any “plans to combat Islamic State on the territory of Syria and other countries” must be carried out “in cooperation with legitimate authorities,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a news conference in Moscow. He made it clear that Russia feels vindicated in backing Assad’s brutal rule

From Washington Post

The legitimate authorities in Iraq would be a different matter to Syria though. But yes, it's likely that any activity in Syria would need to be done with the consent of Assad - which still looks a long way from being something anyone's going to ask for,

this situation in syria is so fucked.. hard to blame obama for assad deciding its cool to kill 200,000+ of his own people and destabilize the entire region while doing so.

idk, i think obama deserves some of the blame for supporting the rebels against assad until realizing that - oops, maybe the rebels are actually the destabilizing force - and SWITCHING sides??

"Supporting the rebels" too much? Many folks (at least center and on the right) blame O for not helping any Syrian "moderate" rebels enough. There is lotsa pro and con opinions out there re whether O should have helped the alleged moderate rebels in Syria more earlier on.

Back to UN involvement possibility, once upon a time UN got involved earlier in the process (not just after desttruction), but it depended on the country. I am thinking the Russian Foreign Minister's use of the phrase "and other countries” includes Iraq (because Russia also doesn't want UN anywhere near Ukraine)

iirc, most of Obama's support for the Syrian rebellion has consisted of repeatedly urging Assad to step down, together with a brief, abortive effort to send small arms to Assad's "moderate opponents", which failed because these moderate forces were largely imaginary.

Obama did assemble some worldwide leverage to convince Assad to give up his chemical weapons, which seems like a plus.

Read somewhere that the deal that got Assad to give up his chemical weapons was really Russia pushing Assad to do this, because Russia was convinced that Obama and others might want to take more direct action against Assad at that time, and Putin figured this would be a way to prevent that. Of course others would suggest that Obama even then did not really desire to go after Assad more deliberately

I don't think there's any military solution to this clusterfuck aside from a massive multinational un/nato invasion which basically will never happen

I don't think that would work out so well either. Region is still basically reeling from the last time the west re-drew everybody's borders.

So now we get IS and Assad redrawing borders instead

Assad and IS can draw them, but it is another thing to make them stick, especially since they have altogether different ideas about the matter.

better people who live there draw their own boarders than a conference on a another continent by people who have never even seen the place.