Jihadists Seize Iraq's Nineveh Province!

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Seamus_L said:
I think the most likely scenario to come out of this is that Iraq will break into 3 states. A Shia one, a Sunni one, and a Kurdish one.
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I don’t know, but it seems to me we are going back to the M-E. I heard one Congress women state we have no business there and she served in Iraq, The rest are on the we have to do something speech. How about someone else does something, the problem is if no-one does anything than either Isis takes over, or Iran enters. Iran may just be talking to drag us back in also.

US is abandoning the US embassy in Baghdad now.
 
Turkey is looking increasingly unstable themselves. A Kurdistan that doesn’t include territory of there’s might be something they can live with.
 
Big Dreams

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has an ambitious project to establish a Islamist state that combines Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine.

“Our final destination will be Baghdad, the decisive battle will be there,’ that’s what their leader of the militants group kept repeating,” the tribal figure said.

ISIS spokesman al-Adnani said in his audio statement that the battle would “rage” in Baghdad and Karbala, a city southwest of the capital that is considered one of the holiest sites for Shiite Muslims.

“Do not relent against your enemy… The battle is not yet raging, but it will rage in Baghdad and Karbala,” Adnani said. “Put on your belts and get ready,” he added.

“March toward Baghdad because there is an account to settle,” he added. Adnani did not forget to remind ISIS militants about their self-proclaimed “ethics of war.”

“When you enter a village, bow your heads and do not brag or boast. Accept repentance from whoever wants repentance and leave alone who leaves alone and show mercy to your fellow Sunnis and your tribes,” Adnani said.

english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2014/06/12/ISIS-militants-plan-to-march-on-Baghdad.html
vid.alarabiya.net/images/2014/06/12/1efb9f61-3303-4ad2-a24d-4c3f494e8c92/1efb9f61-3303-4ad2-a24d-4c3f494e8c92_4x3_296x222.jpg
 
JimR-OCDS said:
The extremist Islamist group ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, shocked the world this week by conquering the northern city of Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities and home to some 2 million people.

ISIS is also a key player in the Syrian civil war, fighting both the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and more moderate rebel forces.
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Russia has been supporting President Assad against the rebels, warning that it was dangerous to support those rebels who are out to remove Assad from power.
 
You can’t take that to mean anything more than what it is. We shoot for democracy, then Dictator as opposed to a terrorist state. Not hard to see this. The Democracies never work, the Dictators are acceptable till they start with genocide and the such, long as they are good dictators in line with our objective political goal. So as a result we arm whoever when Dictator extents to tyranny [in our minds at least].

The problem with this theory is you can’t make people desire democracy, which is exactly what occurred in Iraq. The American democracy plan failed. plain and simple. There is no reason to back that mutt we placed in office, and this is the same for Syria. So we arm terrorists either to protect the mutt or to find another. And when the next doesn’t wash with American business, out he goes as the usual brutal dictator. but they are “our” brutal dictators. Thats the point always missed. Geez man, don’t we see, they want to pick their own Dictator. And let me tell you something about this current terrorist. When they come from no-where, and they move with this kind of brutal accuracy, then they gain favor with the people. In this case Isis has been “feeding” nightly the Sunni areas they confiscated while establishing order by slavery. better known as Sharia Law.

They will live in bondage and slavery till they are sick and tired of oppression and bondage. Then they will fight for themselves and like they really intend to win or die trying.
 
More of the same:

After security forces abandoned their posts, security sources said the towns of Saadiyah and Jalawla had fallen to the insurgents, along with several villages around the Himreen mountains, which have long been a hideout for militants.
…
Kurdish peshmerga forces also deployed men to secure their political party offices in Jalawla before the insurgents arrived in the town. There were no confrontations between them.

The Iraqi army fired artillery at Saadiya and Jalawla from the nearby town of Muqdadiya, sending dozens of families fleeing towards Khaniqin near the Iranian border, security sources said.
reuters.com/article/2014/06/13/us-iraq-violence-idUSKBN0EN0RV20140613
 
The two towns are in ethnically mixed Diyala Province — an unstable region bordering Iran that controls one approach to Baghdad through the town of Baquba, 20 miles north of the capital.
 
We already were over there and had a presence.

I don’t remember when we left but if they ask for our help I would think it shouldn’t be a problem. I am not an expert though.
 
7_Sorrows said:
We already were over there and had a presence.

I don’t remember when we left but if they ask for our help I would think it shouldn’t be a problem. I am not an expert though.
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Yeah, I am not sure whether or not it’d be a just war or an unjust war. I hope someone else will see this thread who knows and will comment to tell us.
 
It is an absolute certainty that ISIL has future plans to attack the Kurds, since they are some of the most moderate and secularized of the Sunnis in the Middle East. However, they don’t want to open too many fronts in the region at this time, and are happy to tap into widespread Sunni resentment against the Shia dominated government in Baghdad, while avoiding a conflict where they would be most vulnerable. At the same time, you can bet that the Peshmerga are ready to attack the Jihadists when necessary if it will advance the cause of a fully independent Kurdistan.
 
Seamus_L said:
Turkey is looking increasingly unstable themselves. A Kurdistan that doesn’t include territory of there’s might be something they can live with.
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I’m inclined to agree with this.

Iraqi Kurds have their own organizations and militias and a reasonable amount of confederation if not full cohesion. Their area contains a lot of rugged terrain. It’s doubtful the ISIS or Iranians will want to take them on, at least for now. They’re not ethnic Arabs, their language is different, and historically they have never been fully integrated into either the Arab or Persian worlds.

The big issue is whether Sunni Arab “Caliphatists” will rule or whether the Persians will. Baghdad, of course, was the capital of the old Arab Caliphate in its golden years. So naturally the Caliphatists are going to want it. On the other hand, Persia has ruled it at times in history and there are a lot of Shiites there, including the power base of Al Sadr, the Iranian agent. Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-based rule was horrific to Shiites, and ISIS is not going to look a bit better to Iraqi Shia. So, they’ll resist, and become ever more dependent on Iran.

I would say the possibility is slim that the Caliphatists are going to take Baghdad, because Iran will defend it with everything it’s got. On the other hand, I would say the likelihood is small Iran will drive them out of western Iraq anytime soon.

The day will come when Iran wants to complete its now-patchwork march to the Mediterranean, however, and every Sunni in the Middle East knows that. Awful as they are, ISIS is preferable to many Sunni over Iranian rule. One notices that the Sunni tribal leaders, who wanted us to stay, now seem to be backing ISIS and are, in fact, being reasonably well respected by ISIS forces. The Sunni Arabs have found a new protector against Iran, it appears, and that protector is ISIS.

We left the Middle East to the Arab/Persian war, and that’s the game there now. It won’t end soon.

Turkish involvement, if any, will be minimal; not that many Turks are not wistful about the old empire, but because, in going into Iraq, the Turks would have a lot of Kurds at their back. Ergodan purged the armed forces as well, so it’s not the power it once was.
 
How ironic it would be if Obama’s unwise foreign policy made us the inadvertent servitor of Iran! That’s really what this would be.
 
The only unwise foreign policy for the US is to put the interest of other nations before our own.

Getting involved in Middle East conflicts was a mistake from 1990, through today.

Let the Muslims war with each other and wait to see the outcome.

Then, let the oil execs negotiate their own contracts with the leaders of the time. If the leaders get over thrown and those contracts become void, that’s the risk the oil corporations took. It’s their loss, not to be paid with American lives or treasure.

Fact is, we got into the Middle East conflicts because of big corporate oil interest, not for US security.

Jim
 
I wonder how much Sistani’s announcement will add to the developing dimension of Sunni vs Shiite?

The senior Shiite cleric in Iraq issued an urgent call to arms on Friday, telling all able-bodied Iraqis to help the government fight Sunni militants who have seized broad stretches of Iraqi territory. The call was a sign of the growing desperation of the country’s Shiites and its shaky Shiite-led central government.

In a statement read by a representative during Friday prayers, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani said it was “the legal and national responsibility of whoever can hold a weapon to hold it to defend the country, the citizens and the holy sites.”
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The representative of Ayatollah Sistani, Sheikh Abdul Mehdi al-Karbalaie, spoke in Karbala, regarded by Shiites as one of Iraq’s holiest cities. The sheikh said volunteers “must fill the gaps within the security forces,” but cautioned that they should not do any more than that.
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In its language and tone, Ayatollah Sistani’s statement portrayed it as a religious and patriotic act to to volunteer either for the Iraqi Army or for a Shiite militia, two forces that are becoming difficult to distinguish from one another.

When the ayatollah’s representative, Mr. Karbalaie, said, “Whoever can hold a weapon has to volunteer to join the security forces,” the call was greeted with cheersand shouts of “It will be done!”
nytimes.com/2014/06/14/world/middleeast/iraq.html
 
JimR-OCDS said:
The only unwise foreign policy for the US is to put the interest of other nations before our own.

Getting involved in Middle East conflicts was a mistake from 1990, through today.

Let the Muslims war with each other and wait to see the outcome.

Then, let the oil execs negotiate their own contracts with the leaders of the time. If the leaders get over thrown and those contracts become void, that’s the risk the oil corporations took. It’s their loss, not to be paid with American lives or treasure.

Fact is, we got into the Middle East conflicts because of big corporate oil interest, not for US security.

Jim
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Ths main U.S. sources of oil are not the Middle East. But other parts of the world rely on it. So, just let them do without?

“Letting the Muslims fight it out” is the foreign policy of the U.S. at present. Only trouble is, that it’s dangerous to allies, murderous to the civilian populations and potentially puts the world’s worst people in control of one of the world’s most valuable resources. Well, then too, it’s hard on the Christian populations. Also hard on the Sunni populations in Iranian-controlled places, on the Shia in the Sunni/jihadi controlled places, very hard on women and others who are on the low end of the ideological totem poles in those places.

But never mind, I guess, huh?
 
Coatimundi said:
I wonder how much Sistani’s announcement will add to the developing dimension of Sunni vs Shiite?

The senior Shiite cleric in Iraq issued an urgent call to arms on Friday, telling all able-bodied Iraqis to help the government fight Sunni militants who have seized broad stretches of Iraqi territory. The call was a sign of the growing desperation of the country’s Shiites and its shaky Shiite-led central government.

In a statement read by a representative during Friday prayers, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani said it was “the legal and national responsibility of whoever can hold a weapon to hold it to defend the country, the citizens and the holy sites.”
…
The representative of Ayatollah Sistani, Sheikh Abdul Mehdi al-Karbalaie, spoke in Karbala, regarded by Shiites as one of Iraq’s holiest cities. The sheikh said volunteers “must fill the gaps within the security forces,” but cautioned that they should not do any more than that.
…
In its language and tone, Ayatollah Sistani’s statement portrayed it as a religious and patriotic act to to volunteer either for the Iraqi Army or for a Shiite militia, two forces that are becoming difficult to distinguish from one another.

When the ayatollah’s representative, Mr. Karbalaie, said, “Whoever can hold a weapon has to volunteer to join the security forces,” the call was greeted with cheersand shouts of “It will be done!”
nytimes.com/2014/06/14/world/middleeast/iraq.html
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Sistani also supported Americans remaining to keep the peace, and opposed Iranian influence in Iraq. It’s different now, of course.
 
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