I've decided I'll sit out the ISIS (ISIL if you prefer) War. I usually record news programs like Morning Joe so I fast forward through the ISIS parts. I may miss something else, but so be it. If the news program is not recorded, I toggle between Soundscapes and the news program to avoid the ISIS War.
I went along with al Qaeda being very bad. After all they actually killed nearly 3,000 people in this country. Maybe more if you count those who are delayed in dying from smoke inhalation. I felt we had to do something and invading Afghanistan to get al Qaeda was fine (remember Afghanistan tribes provided the first "boots on the ground."). Now we are told that ISIS is even worse. And the other day I heard of yet another organization that is considered even worse than ISIS in that their aim is to destroy the U.S.(Khorasan).* And there are also those who say that Hamas is just as bad as ISIS.**
Now during most of my life (and I'm 83) the standard was to say that a group or individual was"worse than the Nazi's." It is interesting that this analogy is no longer used. After all, the Nazi's were defeated almost 70 yrs ago. We've had two or three generations grow up since then. I guess there is a feeling that ISIS is worse than the Russians. Remember when it was Assad that had to go? For the minute we'll ignore him, but I'm sure we'll get back to him some year.
To begin with, we won't put "boots on the ground" though special forces or the CIA don't count. President Obama wants other Arabs or Muslims to do this. I have to wonder why they haven't already done this? They don't seem to worry about ISIS being a threat to them. We always seem to align ourselves with a group of people that don't want to fight for their land. Remember Vietnam and the Iraqi military divisions that collapsed when they were first threatened and armed ISIS by abandoning all their equipment? How many years did we train Iraqi troops - 8 yrs at least, I think. Who trained the North Koreans (well maybe the Soviets), North Vietnamese, Taliban and ISIS forces? They seem to be self trained and better than all our training of their opponents Hey the Americans will do it for us, calm down!
I don't remember the Korean War very well (though I was of age to be called up with the draft), but before we entered the Korean War, it seemed like the North had almost pushed the Southern forces into the sea.** It used to be that the first thing we would do was send in 5,000 Marines and then regretfully build up from there. It is interesting, however, that since we were kicked out of Vietnam, they want to be our trading partners, and we have no residual forces there. Can you imagine that? And Indonesia is still a non-Communist country. Remember the Domino Theory where if South Vietnam would fall to the communist North, then the other SE Asian countries would fall, including Indonesia.
Of course the big focus on the Middle East concerns oil. I had supported oil exploration of ANWR on the north slopes of Alaska and fracking, and the Keystone XL Pipeline to make us independent of Middle East oil and allow us to withdraw from there, but it hasn't worked. Importing some oil from Canada, Mexico, and Valenzuela would be OK.
I yearn for the good old days of Carter and Reagan and Clinton when all we had to worry about were Embassy kidnappings, war with the island nation of Grenada, and fly by shooting of Iraqi radar posts.**** I'm going to sit out this latest war.
* http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-the-khorasan-group-airstrikes-isis-islamic-state-2014-9
** http://mondoweiss.net/2014/09/israeli-government-propaganda
*** http://www.history.com/topics/korean-war
**** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/09/good-old-days.html
Showing posts with label al Qaeda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label al Qaeda. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Sunday, August 10, 2014
IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
There are those who feel that if we had left a residual force in Iraq that the Iraqi army and the Iraqi politics would have been much better. Well, I am far from convinced even disregarding the fact that Milaki wanted us to leave. After we beat Al Qaeda, and the Taliban, in Afghanistan we did leave a residual force that varied between 10,000 and 20,000 troops, and the Taliban came back stronger than ever, although Al Qaeda remained subdued in Afghanistan but grew elsewhere. I suspect that President Obama is closer to the truth in saying that if we had left 20,000 troops there, there would just have been that many more Americans at risk.
It was really depressing that, after 8 years of training, that the first time the Iraqi army was tested, it just disbanded and turned over all the equipment to ISIS. A woman reporter who interviewed a number of the troops that took tail said that all the deserters said they woke up in the morning and all the leaders were gone. They feel that the officers and non-coms were bribed to disappear. Some speculated that some of the leaders actually were given positions in ISIS. Somehow this sort of corruption sounds realistic. I also suspect that with time the Sunnis of Iraq will get tired of the ruthless Islamic religious right and start to rebel against them.
One hopes that the Iraqi army and militias can keep ISIS out of southern Iraq where most of the oil is.
As I have said elsewhere, I think we are trying to push something in Iraq that isn't there short of there being a ruthless dictator.* Opinion seems to be gravitating towards supporting the Kurds to become independent of Iraq. I presume this makes Turkey a bit nervous because there is a Kurdish part of Turkey contiguous with the Iraqi Kurds that might like to join them in a Kurdistan.
*http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/07/syria-vs-libya.html
It was really depressing that, after 8 years of training, that the first time the Iraqi army was tested, it just disbanded and turned over all the equipment to ISIS. A woman reporter who interviewed a number of the troops that took tail said that all the deserters said they woke up in the morning and all the leaders were gone. They feel that the officers and non-coms were bribed to disappear. Some speculated that some of the leaders actually were given positions in ISIS. Somehow this sort of corruption sounds realistic. I also suspect that with time the Sunnis of Iraq will get tired of the ruthless Islamic religious right and start to rebel against them.
One hopes that the Iraqi army and militias can keep ISIS out of southern Iraq where most of the oil is.
As I have said elsewhere, I think we are trying to push something in Iraq that isn't there short of there being a ruthless dictator.* Opinion seems to be gravitating towards supporting the Kurds to become independent of Iraq. I presume this makes Turkey a bit nervous because there is a Kurdish part of Turkey contiguous with the Iraqi Kurds that might like to join them in a Kurdistan.
*http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/07/syria-vs-libya.html
Friday, May 16, 2014
THE DRONES OF WAR
The U.S. is actually involved in a world war against terrorists, but since there are few 'boots on the ground" there is little notice. The effort has been going on in Africa for many years, Our principal military base is in a small country in Africa called Djibouti. Though our main effort has concentrated particularly on Somalia from Ethiopia and within Yemen,* the war effort is greater than that. Apparently in 2014, we are getting ready to build a new drone base in Niger to provide reconnaissance support for the French in Mali and it is admitted that this base could also be used for attack drones.** As the war effort in Afghanistan winds down, the war in Africa is still heating up.
The use of drone attacks has been controversial in that they have been used to kill American citizen terrorists in Yemen and there has been significant "collateral" deaths and injuries of citizens. It is said that these drone attacks are leading to recruitment of people by the terrorist groups. As I have said elsewhere, however, would American helicopter gunships or boots on the ground be received better and wouldn't there be collateral deaths and injuries as well?***
In the past, airpower was not decisive in wars and many boots on the ground were needed to finish off an enemy. In some cases even hundreds of thousands of troops were not successful, as in Vietnam.
The drone attacks on terrorist groups may be having a significant effect in that on 9/11/2013, there were no terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions (There was no inflammatory video against Islam either to stir up the extremists.). This does not mean that there may not be planning underway by terrorist groups to do something spectacular in 2016 to disrupt the American presidential election just as the American Embassy hostages captured by Iran disrupted the 1980 Presidential election and led to the overthrow of President Carter by Ronald Reagan. Curiously, shortly after that election, the Iranians released the hostages. I've never understood why the Iranians preferred Reagan over Carter.
I don't know that Boko Haran in Nigeria is a terrorist group, but seems to be more of a political insurgency bent on taking over the country and converting it to an Islamic sharia law state, isolated from the West. Thus is Boko Haram a terrorist group or is what is happening in Nigeria a civil war? Think of Syria? Are the rebels terrorist groups or is it a civil war going on to displace the current President Assam? Some of the Syrian rebels are Islamic extremists, maybe with ties to Al Qaeda. Though their former leader of Boko Haram says some weird things. In a 2009 BBC interview, Mohammed Yusuf, then leader of the group, stated his belief that the fact of a spherical Earth is contrary to Islamic teaching and should be rejected[50], along with Darwinian evolution and the fact of rain originating from water evaporated by the sun.[51] Before his death, Yusuf reiterated the group's objective of changing the current education system and rejecting democracy.[52] Nigerian academic Hussain Zakaria told BBC News that the controversial cleric had a graduate education and spoke proficient English.**** But is this any more weird than some American politicians claiming that women do not get pregnant from rape or if they do, it is God's will. And I suspect that being against Darwinian evolution is as much accepted by many American Christians as it is by some Islamic groups.
* http://www.wired.com/2012/08/somalia-drones/all/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Yemen
** http://tune.pk/video/2704833/us-to-build-new-drone-bases-in-africa
***
****http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram
The use of drone attacks has been controversial in that they have been used to kill American citizen terrorists in Yemen and there has been significant "collateral" deaths and injuries of citizens. It is said that these drone attacks are leading to recruitment of people by the terrorist groups. As I have said elsewhere, however, would American helicopter gunships or boots on the ground be received better and wouldn't there be collateral deaths and injuries as well?***
In the past, airpower was not decisive in wars and many boots on the ground were needed to finish off an enemy. In some cases even hundreds of thousands of troops were not successful, as in Vietnam.
The drone attacks on terrorist groups may be having a significant effect in that on 9/11/2013, there were no terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions (There was no inflammatory video against Islam either to stir up the extremists.). This does not mean that there may not be planning underway by terrorist groups to do something spectacular in 2016 to disrupt the American presidential election just as the American Embassy hostages captured by Iran disrupted the 1980 Presidential election and led to the overthrow of President Carter by Ronald Reagan. Curiously, shortly after that election, the Iranians released the hostages. I've never understood why the Iranians preferred Reagan over Carter.
I don't know that Boko Haran in Nigeria is a terrorist group, but seems to be more of a political insurgency bent on taking over the country and converting it to an Islamic sharia law state, isolated from the West. Thus is Boko Haram a terrorist group or is what is happening in Nigeria a civil war? Think of Syria? Are the rebels terrorist groups or is it a civil war going on to displace the current President Assam? Some of the Syrian rebels are Islamic extremists, maybe with ties to Al Qaeda. Though their former leader of Boko Haram says some weird things. In a 2009 BBC interview, Mohammed Yusuf, then leader of the group, stated his belief that the fact of a spherical Earth is contrary to Islamic teaching and should be rejected[50], along with Darwinian evolution and the fact of rain originating from water evaporated by the sun.[51] Before his death, Yusuf reiterated the group's objective of changing the current education system and rejecting democracy.[52] Nigerian academic Hussain Zakaria told BBC News that the controversial cleric had a graduate education and spoke proficient English.**** But is this any more weird than some American politicians claiming that women do not get pregnant from rape or if they do, it is God's will. And I suspect that being against Darwinian evolution is as much accepted by many American Christians as it is by some Islamic groups.
* http://www.wired.com/2012/08/somalia-drones/all/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Yemen
** http://tune.pk/video/2704833/us-to-build-new-drone-bases-in-africa
***
****http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
BENGHAZI (SIGH)
As we all know, on September 11, 2012, there was an attack (actually three attacks) on the American Consulate and CIA compound in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city. Except for political purposes, there is no more tired news than Benghazi. After all the four deaths in the Benghazi attacks were small compared to other attacks on our diplomatic missions,* only unusual in that an ambassador was killed; however, Charley Rose had the Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Morell, on his program on April 3, 2014, that I found to be interesting and worth a listen.** It should be noted that there has been a 9/11 since Benghazi with no published activity.
Morell's thought is that the original attack was by a group of extremists, maybe including some al Qaeda members, who wanted to go into the Consulate and cause some mischief like their Egyptian compatriots did earlier.*** There were two other attacks and each picked up steam compared to the previous one. The second attack was actually against the CIA compound, and they picked up some heavier armaments along the way. The third attack was the most vicious and had the heaviest armaments. Two of the deaths were actually at the CIA compound.
* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/09/it-was-movie-trailer-after-all.html
** (http://video.tvguide.com/Charlie+Rose/Michael+Morell/21826147/tvo-194941-season-22-episode-156 primary=Shows&show=Charlie%20Rose&display_mode=details&length=fullepisode)
*** In Egypt, 2000 Salafist activists protested against the film Innocence of Muslims at 5pm EET (11am EDT) at the US embassy in Cairo. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack)
Morell's thought is that the original attack was by a group of extremists, maybe including some al Qaeda members, who wanted to go into the Consulate and cause some mischief like their Egyptian compatriots did earlier.*** There were two other attacks and each picked up steam compared to the previous one. The second attack was actually against the CIA compound, and they picked up some heavier armaments along the way. The third attack was the most vicious and had the heaviest armaments. Two of the deaths were actually at the CIA compound.
* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/09/it-was-movie-trailer-after-all.html
** (http://video.tvguide.com/Charlie+Rose/Michael+Morell/21826147/tvo-194941-season-22-episode-156 primary=Shows&show=Charlie%20Rose&display_mode=details&length=fullepisode)
*** In Egypt, 2000 Salafist activists protested against the film Innocence of Muslims at 5pm EET (11am EDT) at the US embassy in Cairo. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack)
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