One of the more erudite takedowns of a kommie by William N. Grigg:
Dr. Barbara LeSavoy, gun confiscation advocate and Director of Women and Gender Studies ...I would never have guessed...
at The College at Brockport in New York, may be the authentic embodiment of contemporary totalitarian leftism. She might be LARPing – that is, Live-Action Role-Playing – in the character of a self-lobotomized ideological drone. Or perhaps she’s in the middle of an immersive, Andy Kaufman-style long-form comedy sketch.
Either she, or the character she is playing, is the post-feminist equivalent of the New Soviet Man. Programmed at a chromosomal level to think and act in collectivist terms, LeSavoy looks upon Barack Obama with the same enraptured, unalloyed devotion once directed at Stalin and Mao by their most dutiful cadres.
A cri de coeur from the side that has numbers but no guns.
[Hurriyet] Most useful idiots took it literally when The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... 's then-emerging class of "reformist" (or post-modern) Islamists promised in their 2002 election manifesto that:
"Our party [Justice and Development - AKP] views law not as a means to frighten or punish but as a means to provide justice." The manifesto then promised "a state of law and a justice system in compliance with universal norms."
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The Iraqi Army is down to just five active divisions, but even those are less -- and in some ways more -- than they seem.
One army division is now under informal militia command, according to U.S. and other Western military officers. Shi'ite paramilitary elements have taken at least partial control of the Interior Ministry, according to security officers, Iraqi politicians and U.S. military officials. The Iraqi government rejects that claim.
The Shi'ite militias, which dominate most frontlines, say they support the government and pose no threat to Iraq's minority Sunni sect. The Popular Mobilisation Committee, or Hashid Shaabi, as the militias are collectively known, belongs "to the Iraqi government," said Naim al-Aboudi, a spokesman for the Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia. "The Hashid doesn't represent a sect. It represents all Iraqis."
But the militias make no secret of their independence from Baghdad. Militia leader Amiri warned in a televised interview last month that if the Shi'ite groups did not approve of U.S. military operations in Iraq, "We can go to Abadi and the government and ... pressure them: 'Either you will do this, or we will do that.'" Amiri did not specify what action his group would take.
The first essential attribute of government is that it enjoys a monopoly on the legal use of force within its jurisdiction. Iraq fails this test, badly. Given Iranian meddling, ISIS firepower, U.S. fecklessness, and the boldness of the local militias, Baghdad seems unlikely to ever again fulfill that first essential function even if the fight against ISIS is ever won.
...If recent years in upper Mesopotamia are any indicator (and I believe they are), then the instability which allowed ISIS to thrive is likely to metastasize to the wider Arab world -- pushing my envisioned "steady-city-state" endgame even further into the future.
Getting there, no matter how long it takes, requires a complete rethinking of our approach to the region. We need to shift our focus away from bogus capitals which pretend to govern bogus countries. Instead we must try working with (or against) the Arab equivalent of big-city ward heelers. And we'll need a White House, a State Department, and a Pentagon able to effectively and quickly apply our statecraft with flexibility, ingenuity, cynicism, and sometimes force to an ever-shifting landscape.
Those are not typically American strengths, but we'd best learn them quickly.
#3
We had an American Shogun sit on them for 6 years, didn't get around to real rebuilding till the Korean War kicked off and thought it might be better they were capitalists rather than red. That was motivation enough back then to stay around a while with a robust Status of Forces Agreement in place.
#4
Facing them are an estimated 80,000 opposition fighters from all groups or factions, of which circa 10-13,000 are ISIS/ISIL.
Of these five Iraqi divisions, prolly safe to say that 2-3 are intended by the IGA for the direct protection of the Iraqi Govt itself.
All in all, the Iraqi Army then is roughly par or slighltly outnumbered vee the ISIS/ISIL per se, + vastly outnumbered in gross by the fighters of the various Militant Groups including but not limited to the ISIS/ISIL.
A DANGEROUS REALITY FOR IRAQ WHICH MAY EXPLAIN WHY ...
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS, BIGNEWSNETWORK > IRAQ'S RULLING BLOC [Alliance] WANTS RUSSIAN AIRSTRIKES, POLITICIANS TELL RT [Russia Today] OF "LACK OF TRUST" BETWEEN IRAQ AND US [includ US-led Coalition] - RT NEWS.
* RELATED SAME > [Sputnik News] IRAQI PARLIAMENT TO VOTE ON REQUEST FOR RUSSIAN AIRSTRIKES.
* FYI LUCIANNE > [Associated Press] DESPITE US-LED [Air] CAMPAIGN, ISLAMIC STATE GROUP RAKES IN OIL EARNINGS.
#5
Drone strikes may help Iraq delay or stave off defeat from the ISIS + Other, BUT LIKELY WON'T BRING VICTORY TO THE IGA OR US-LED COALITION WIDOUT MASSIVE OR EFFECTIVE GROUND FORCES INTERVENTION.
Henry Kissinger's luminous career was punctuated by one great disappointment, namely his failure to foresee the collapse of the Soviet system and the downfall of the foreign-policy system to which he devoted his life. That's on par with the old joke: "Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" Kissinger was more hedgehog than fox: The fox knows many things, said Archilochus, but the hedgehog knows one important thing. Kissinger knew one important thing, which had the sole defect of being wrong.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
