“In this new video series, Washington Institute experts assess the current state of military operations in Iraq and evaluate Abadi’s ability to extricate his country from deadlock, defeat, and disintegration.”
From the looks and sound of the productions, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (TWI) has launched a DIY-AH (do-it-yourself-at-home) effort to promote its fellows’ analyses. May the TWI powers that be give them an upgrade in audio-visual recording technology.
What follows is an incomplete relay of the series, but in the way of the web, whether the viewer starts out with e-mail (as I did) or on TWI’s web page or YouTube, all routers lead back to some kind of primary media content.
Of course, if you heard it from me first — after I’ve heard it from them — in the older fashioned way of news, good!
“They are very good at using psychological operations to very quickly establish the sense that they control areas, putting up their flags on all key administrative buildings, cross-roads, wide visibility locations, and they’re very good at pursuing what they want in the mergers and acquisitions model of growth whereby they ruck into an area and immediately try to recruit the most like-minded insurgent group in the area to become part of ISIS.” (1:28 – 1:59).
“First, you can’t address the ISIS threat in Iraq, without addressing the ISIS threat in Syria. Secondly, you can’t address the ISIS threat in Iraq and Syria without addressing the foreign fighter problem. And third, the U.S. really cannot “solve” the region’s problems, because they are rooted in issues of religious and political identity and legitimacy, and this is a problem that can only be worked out among Muslims themselves. ” (2:18 – 2:41)
My “big picture” thought, which might make sense of an $11 billion arms sale): what ISIS scours Qatar will devour.
One day.
However, there are many days between this day and that one, and the Ummah, bloodied from Afghanistan to Yemen, has been pushed by the ambitions and behaviors of its own subscription into a larger global conversation about rightful power, despotism, barbarism, and democracy.
Obama has given MB plenty of room for operating and for being observed. As he is not a President for Life, the stronger elements that comprise our government will survive him and probably be able to use the knowledge gained during his tenure. I would fear as much a flip toward the extreme Right in America. We really need a central, progressive, and prudent politics, and the zealots in politics have really skewed the conversation away from the middle ranks. That needs fixing, so I am becoming a Passionate Moderate Liberal.
The above comes not from The Awesome Conversation but rather from private correspondence.
As with the polarizing of American politics, which so far remain civil, a glance at the hot conflicts within the Islamic Small Wars campus tell a tale about the possession of armies in the name of the people: Syria just didn’t have one.
Bashar the Butcher al-Assad had an army.
Every band of mixed pedigree with heavy jihad on its mind made itself an army.
The greater portion of the population of Syria, which numbers above six million internally displace and refugee: no army — no defense — nothing against the state’s military power or the ruthless ambition of spoilers ambitious for plunder, rape, and rapine beneath their black banners.
*
Iraq appeared to have had an army before ISIS bore down on it and got it to jump out of its boots and uniforms, so it may be said that moderate Sunnis, Chaldean Christians, and the Yezedis also had no more army in Iraq than they would have had in Syria.
To its credit plus the rightful defensive stance of Shiites looking north toward Sunni extremists, it might be said that Baghdad, finally, has an army, and it’s moving but with the pace known to other armies challenged by Islamist irregulars. Even with an army formed to defend the middle humanity of a state, the same would seem to need an army of detectives to deal with the state’s major irritants.
As regards the above noted article, I am also reading http://www.amazon.com/Waiting-Ordinary-Day-Unraveling-Life/dp/B003D7JUF8 , which caught my eye at the used book store — $4. Apparently, American military forces and the mentality that accompanies them make a mess of relationships with even better-willed or moderate elements in the state’s culture and society, so it’s not so great sending in the Marines even though today’s Iraqi live in a world, a larger world, immensely different and unconcerned with the concerns of their own.
Elsewhere, I’ve characterized Sunni-Shiite rivalry (in neighboring Syria) as “two mad wasps in a bell jar” — they’re in this confined space, however large it may seem to those involved, bent on killing one another en masse in relation to aspects of religious history completely alien to most of the world — i.e., to Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, and others. That long embedded cultural content — the literature of the mind — holds sway against a clouded and uncertain political and spiritual future that wants for a sea change in the perception of humanity. If that change is happening, it’s happening around a storm front, the challenge posed last week by ISIS being exactly that. Before other thought may be entertained, the ISIS (radical Sunni) advance has to be stopped (by Shiite opposition within the framework adopted and endorsed over the course of centuries) and its power contained and reversed.
In neighboring Syria, it seems the one thing Obama and Putin may agree on has been containment rather than address of the issues in the space involved. Islam-by-the-sword, the legitimacy of political absolutism, the murderous Shiite-Sunni dispute have been essentially left alone in space to do as they wish, a de fact stance helpful primarily to war profiteers.
ISIS, meanwhile, announced that its capture of Mosul has triggered a recruitment surge, as radical Sunnis from around the region have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the group. Residents in Mosul told the New York Times that ISIS has pacified the city, and that they prefer to be governed by a group al Qaeda deemed too radical than by the Shia-dominated government.
The Pakistani Taliban on Monday took responsibility for the Sunday assault on the country’s largest international airport in Karachi. In six hours of fighting at least 28 people died, including the 10 attackers. “It’s just the beginning,” said Shahidullah Shahid, a spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, an offspring of the Afghan Taliban.
Since the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) launched a new offensive in Deir Al-Zor province 40 days ago, 634 people, mainly fighters, have been killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
A local police officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity — noting that he was not speaking in the name of the authorities — confirmed what the activist said. “Police cars that approach Arab and Muslim areas are regularly attacked with rocks,” he said. “At the moment, local Swedish authorities are not sure how to keep providing public services in those areas. They are even considering rolling back certain state services there. It is just too risky to operate in such a hostile environment. A few residents of the Arab-Muslim areas in Uppsala describe their neighborhoods as ‘Sharia areas where Sweden’s government is not welcome.'”
I don’t know if the world will get its caliphate, but it appears to be getting its global war.
Never mind, Mr. Zahran, what messages Muslims may be sending in and to Sweden and the west (or that other entity, Great Britain): what messages are Muslims sending to Muslims worldwide?
At the moment, it appears King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has decided to commit infanticide on the basis of his own capricious pique, and why not? Is he not infallible? Does his authority not rest on direct appointment by God? Where Allah may be merciful, must he be so as well? Who says?
And who cares about four girls anyway?
It’s true: I fear to list for their silence the “feminists” whom I’ve come to know through their writing in social media.
Christian, Jewish, or Muslim: in the face of what King Abdullah appears to have in mind for his disfavored daughters — silence!
For the malignant narcissist, whether Bashar al-Assad or King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia — or just the average mafioso — the whole world is their world (or will be), and they are to bathe in its adulation and love (“narcissistic supply”) without end. Whether met in family or on the grand tours known to statesmen, these same appear to have no “off button”. The path they take from manipulation to control to sadism is certain, and they exceed limits.
From out of his loins, the King of Saudi Arabia made his contribution to the conception and birth of four beautiful, healthy girls, and now he is killing them slowly, and it appears no power on earth has the power to forestall the crime.
When he is done, this one heinous act will stand for him — will represent him, his character, his image — for all time.
It will contribute as well to the message that Islam sends the west about its conception of power and what it does with its vision.
The Syrian People haven’t control of any army representing their needs, which today are immense with suffering.
The three amigos of dictatorship — Putin-Assad-Khamenei — have positioned and milked Syria’s productive capacities and strategic location for some time. One may have hoped for Russia in the post-Soviet, post-KGB era to have taken the lead in producing a post-Soviet buffer and client in Syria, which by legacy may be conceded to Russia’s zone of control and influence (if we’re going to have that kind of world with superpowers locked into strategic checkmate for everyone’s security).
No dice.
Post-Soviet has transformed into a 19th Century style oligarchy suspended firmly in favor and patronage around the “vertical of power”. So far. Putin knows what’s needed and is capable of change. Nonetheless, the horror he has back in Syria cannot or will not differentiate between combatants and noncombatant constituents, and state media RT and others have spun barrel-bombing Bashar al-Assad into the hero of Syrian secularism.
While there’s some truth to that, the damage in death and injury, dispersion and lost cities tell that the want of a healthy secularism pales before the ambition to again deeply subjugate the Syrian People to the Assad will.
A Look At the Other Side
Al-Nusra and ISIL and a large assortment of fighters, from upside-down European teenagers to old village militia, has looked to the Qur’an for guidance toward the development of Syrian theocracy or caliphate, either way another autocratic system bent on the glorification — today: self-aggrandizement — of leaders and the subjugation of all others. They have discovered instead, so far, the endless divisions and egotism inherent in narcissistic “mobocracy” and “thugocracy”.
Instead of launching war of principle to unseat a brutal dictatorship, the Islamists find themselves fighting over personalities, which, if any may step back from it, they might find a war over the character of leadership personality itself.
The “west” and most of the world able to make itself helpful has now a proven capability for moving humanitarian aid to regions troubled by natural disaster and war, and a part of that involves the volunteering of military assets; however, the world hasn’t got the principle of deploying a military coalition as an invading force in a civil war. NATO “Coalitions of the Willing” have involved at least the chimera of direct threat (Iraq) underscored, again, by the workings — including state support for terrorism — of an obscene dictatorship, or actual attack from foreign lands (Afghanistan).
Those volunteers most passionate about fighting in Syria have repeatedly proven themselves confused about God, humanity, and themselves — or none would have had the chance, much less the motivation, for throwing bakers into their own ovens. Now they and we are in a terrible position: pushing out against Assad-Khamenei (with Putin in a supporting role), there is no expanding middle force. The kernel for that should have been General Idris, but good, much less, civil, even nice, doesn’t seem to work in the Syrian theater.
Between dictatorship-for-money and tyranny attached to an egotistical presumption about one’s self and God, the French, among others, have signaled refusal to support either fascist track.
Israelis have been providing emergency medical care, including longer-term care, to Syrians injured or in need of medical attention (Syrian mothers have borne children in Israel). They have also pitched in with humanitarian relief even with the erasure of Hebrew or origin labels attached to care shipments.
It’s not like it hasn’t been thought about, but even the band-aid of an “humanitarian corridor”, a DMZ, a safe zone on Syrian soil adjacent to affected boundaries, requires defense.
Experience with the camps developed for the refugees of 1948 suggests too that such become permanent habitations and develop their own political character, a character sustained and damned by charity across generations and ensured by Arab prejudice and will, the refugees remaining disenfranchised and, so well demonstrated by what has happened to the Yarmouk Camp in Syria, treated as military assets held for war rather than like human beings.
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It may be taken with a weary nod that Muslim teens and converts outside of Syria have been drawn to the fighting, for such fighting presents to them as noble and packaged with many other directions and emotions about things in the world, while the adults in charge (for the time being) seem not very far from the illusions and passions of youth themselves. They are up there on the ramparts, “loaded for bear” (as hunters say), and full of themselves but now, the evil on the other side exceeding what they have made of themselves, they have to stay, and what the world would fight for, if it could get it together, is what they themselves may have to fight for, and that starts with change within.
So one would wish not to see one tyrant replaced by another, but in Syria’s brutal and frequently absurd medieval fighting, the tyrannical within the opposition needs must recognize itself and bend toward the grain of humanity.
According to reports received by “Human Rights Activists for Democracy in Iran”, despite Mr. Boroujerdi’s serious and worrisome health conditions, and instead of transferring him to a hospital, Movahedi, deputy prosecutor to Special Clerical Tribunal went to his cell to harass and psychologically torture Mr. Boroujerdi.
Ayatollah Hossein-Kazamani Boroujerdi, a senior member of the Shiite Muslim clergy, is presently serving the eighth year of an 11-year sentence handed down to him by the Islamic Republic’s courts for advocating the separation of state and religion inside Iran. He has also spoken against political Islam and its leaders.
For the regime, one may imagine, the political prisoner is a thorn set aside and safe from creating further botheration.
For opponents to the regime, the same political prisoner may be treated as a convenient perennial.
It would appear then that Ayatollah Seyed Hossein Kazemeini Boroujerdi has become a reliable fixture as a prisoner of conscience.
As anarchy and civil war grind on in Syria — and the major politicians mouth sock puppet platitudes — Boroujerdi, even in prison for many years, stands signal for the manners and values promoted by Ayatollah Khamenei’s: autocracy, imprisonment, kleptocracy, subjugation.
Earlier this morning, the issue of Iran’s nuclear development programs came up on Facebook with the posting of this piece, which pointed toward disinformation in the U.S. – NATO perception of Ayatollah Khamenei’s kleptotheocracy.
“At present, Iran can best be described as a country determined to preserve for itself the option of acquiring nuclear weapons capability at some future date: to shorten, to the greatest extent possible, the time it will take to build these weapons (and to warn the world) once the decision is made to do so, by developing dispersed, hardened dual-use nuclear fuel cycle capabilities; and to seek shelter from international nonproliferation pressure in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’s (NPT) promise of access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.” 2012 – CFR – http://www.cfr.org/iran/iran-nuclear-challenge/p28330?excerpt=1
As no one pays me anything, lol, I’m definitely not paid enough to sift data on Iran’s nuclear development programs, whether for civilian grid distribution or fast warhead or other weapons system delivery.
It takes time to dig up and dig into intelligence themes (even in what is becoming called “Open Source Intelligence). Try not to be swayed by the latest in claims without evaluating them with other data broadly compiled and at hand.
Deeply controlling and narcissistic personalities suffer from the hubris that they alone may control an entire information environment, and so they may but with gaps and holes streaming in data of greater integrity.
To misinform an enemy’s intelligence gathering apparatus while refusing third-party inspections in an area critical to regional and world peace has its own disingenuous and hideous cast: controlling a lie is not control: in fact, it is opposite as it invites aggression and seeds chaos.
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The former “Evil Empire” will host the Winter Olympics starting Friday. As then, as now: Russia, whether its constituents like it or not, has to keep buried beneath tons of glamour, glitter, ice, and snow the fact that it has supported an incredibly brutal dictatorship in Syria and just a step beyond it the same Ayatollah that has kept in prison and tortured another senior cleric for advocating what Russians prefer: a secular society separating church from state.
Russians online, I am certain, read the news too and doubtless follow the Syrian Civil War and its many themes, including the anachronistic Shiite-Sunni rivalry that energizes a certain portion of humanity while enriching beyond wildest dreams the dictators who profit on mass murder and suffering, albeit, lucky for them today, as sponsors of war of benefit to themselves.
Addendum
In addition to the routine imprisonment and torture of a political rival, the kindly-looking Ayatollah Khamenei via his client against the west Bashar al-Assad also supports (whether he knows it or not — but then how could he not know it?) this kind of behavior: UN quietly documents Syria’s war against children | The World – Financial Times blog – 2/5/2014.
What Russians are doing aligned with the Assad and Khamenei regimes today, I leave to Russians to answer for themselves.
The de facto global state of affairs involves a conflict-ridden cultural polyphony — many peoples living in proximity — with disproportionate warfare experienced in and around Islam. Not the only conflict nexus (by far), it’s confusion well relates to how information and perception work when used wrongly, as with lying or deceit, or for wrong purposes.
Last month, more than 900 souls lost their lives in Iraq in direct relation to fighting over belief and governance.
That has to stop.
The only way to get it to stop is to get under the language drivers that excuse, motivate, or promote ideas that would seem not to be working very well or not at all (aside: some 34,000 Iraqi families have been displaced recently in relation to the ISIS presence in Fallujah).
The thread topic was about lying and featured a list detailing the many ways. The comment came up when a participant praised the character of those who believed in God and in the Day of Judgment.
Beneath that, one might ask — and best that something of a narcissist familiar with narcissism as a dimension in psychology ask its — how special is anyone, really, or any collection of persons? And on what basis? Merit and “meritocracy” or “meritocratic” behavior and systems have some sway in the west, but with peace, even accomplishment need not be an end-all or cause (or excuse) for the impositions of “social Darwinism”.
Goodness counts too.
Or devoted atheists and secularists would not ask do often, “Do you need God to be good?”
In the United States, the “ethical unions” obtain the nonprofit status of other religious organizations: that is, even separate from faith in divine existence, the embrace of a way in living, of a philosophy of living, constitutes investment in religion. The messianic urge to drive everyone to believe in God and Judgment Day has strength yet in Islam but not so much as it may have had once in Christianity and not much at all in Judaism even though Jews themselves very much believe in God, secular-appearing though they may seem.
Aside here: the Torah does not being with a statement about language, mankind, or power: it begins with a statement about God and the universe.
Add earth, some weather, life — a pretty good stage.
Then, finally, we get something earthly, like a garden, and talk, which is immediately true and not true, rather disingenuous in fact, as regards Eve’s dying after eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (she does die — and she doesn’t: she becomes human, aware, self-aware, and possessed of conscience).
The humans are human in Torah and if possessed momentarily of magical abilities, it’s with knowing full well that God is doing the miracle, not themselves.
Here on earth, humans are human too, and perhaps the more we appreciate that and deal with the exuberance of nature in human nature and its variety in the development and expression of culture and mind, the better for all and, gosh, the planet.
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