The Arab Spring and "the War on Terror"

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I am interested by what is happening behind the scenes in Iraq at the moment.

 

We have a case in the north, where coalition air strikes have helped the Pesh pick up key villages around Kirkuk and also Mosul, going from essentially a  defensive force into one capable of counter offensives against IS.

 

Yet closer to Baghdad we have seen Iraqi Army units of battlion size left under siege until overran, without support from the air or reinforcement from other Iraqi units. We have also had a failed IS offensive against a Sunni tribe following a siege on 55 miles north of Baghdad.

 

It makes me wonder what the Iraqi government is doing to not request strikes in support of their own forces and the Sunni tribes who can peel a lot of man power off IS and hold the key to defeating them in Iraq.

[Ghost]

[Awol]

It makes me wonder what the Iraqi government is doing...

The band has a new front man but it's still playing the same old tune.

[daz316]

Reading twitter it looks as though isis are literally just about to take over kobane which is next to turkey. Seems Turkey won't stop it don't want America to do anything. Can see tweets from people there pleading for help as though it's about to be a genocide any minute now. Crazy to read and can't imagine what happening there now. Why we aren't helping here is beyond me if we are serious about stopping them

[Awol]

Turkey are quite happy to see the Syrian Kurds given a good going over because they are politically aligned with the PKK. That's one of the reasons they've facilitated for the Jihadis and helped them attack the Kurds during the Syrian civil war.

They are voting on possible intervention today and allowing coalition forces to base on their turf (under massive US pressure), I reckon they will eventually do something, once the Syrian Kurds have been pulled apart by IS.

Dirty ........

[TrentVilla]

I understand why Turkey isn't doing anything, less said about them the better but why aren't the coalition air forces?

Surely AWOL if they are surrounding the town they are out in the open and easy for us to identify and target?

[daz316]

Isn't it fairly dangerous of Turkey to allow isis to control a town so close to their territory regardless of who occupied it previously?

Agreed as well trent, it's clear where they are and all over twitter but no air strike in site. Dark reasons behind that? Is this the first war where tweets will expose government action/lack of and therefore expose and make clear the agendas really at play for all to see?

[TrentVilla]

Well Turkey have seemingly moved tanks the other side of the railway line that seems to be the border so I think the message from them is quite clear to ISIS. Help yourselves to Kobane and do as you wish just stay out of Turkey or else.

[Awol]

I understand why Turkey isn't doing anything, less said about them the better but why aren't the coalition air forces?

Surely AWOL if they are surrounding the town they are out in the open and easy for us to identify and target?

We and the other euro wasters won't bomb there to support the Kurds because it's in Syria, and therefore thanks to Ed Milibrain we'd need a UNSC resolution to do that.

The reason the US aren't doing the necessary right now is probably some horrible compromise with Turkey, i.e. If you want to use our territory for future operations in Syria (the long game) then this is our price.

Like I said before, the Turkish regime is revolting.

EDIT: to add Cameron actually said he reserves the right to take action and Syria in order to avert genocide and then explain to Parliament afterwards. However if the US has put the breaks on that then 1) we will do as we are told, and 2) with only six aircraft available the effect would be negligible anyway.

Rubbish stat time: in GW1 the RAF had 37 combat squadrons available, today they have 7 - total. Yet some people think defence cuts are a great idea, until you actually need defence assets.

Edited October 2, 2014 by Awol

[TrentVilla]

Why would the US agree to that though? Surely they are capable of doing what they want to in Syria without the use of the base in Turkey?

If the US allows IS to enter Kobane then I for one will have to question why they or indeed we are getting involved at all because it clearly won't be for humanitarian reasons.

[Awol]

Why would the US agree to that though? Surely they are capable of doing what they want to in Syria without the use of the base in Turkey?

If the US allows IS to enter Kobane then I for one will have to question why they or indeed we are getting involved at all because it clearly won't be for humanitarian reasons.

We are at the front end of a campaign that will take years, and no matter what the politicos say now it will probably, at some future point, involve western ground troops.

Turkey is the place we'd need to launch from to affect northern Syria (Jordan is a long walk from there) so we need them onside. Upsetting Turkey now would make that logistically impossible, and they may just decide to carry on giving succour to the Jihadis (not IS but certainly Al Nusra/Al Qaeda) to make a point.

It's a filthy business mate.

Edited October 2, 2014 by Awol

[maqroll]

I saw this live, the guy wiped the floor with the presenters

Edited October 2, 2014 by maqroll

[blandy]

Rubbish stat time: in GW1 the RAF had 37 combat squadrons available, today they have 7 - total. Yet some people think defence cuts are a great idea, until you actually need defence assets.

This is the most infuriating thing. When you get people, understandably saying" we must do something in Libya to protect those poor innocent..."/ "we must do something in Iraq to stop IS from..." or "we must stop Assad in Syria from..."

 

Yet at the same time they are "Defence cuts necessary/Military Equipment suppliers evil and so on"

 

i.e. Morally we must help these people and morally we must get rid of (most of) our Military capability and defence spending - total opposite desires from the same people on different days.

 

At least have a bit of consistency - if you call for the de-arming, don't then demand that the military or Gov't takes immediate action to stop whatever atrocity offends you on any particular day.

[Awol]

@Blandy: Amen brother.

[OutByEaster?]

If we (and by we I mean the US) wanted to protect these people we would - it's the same expediency that we used in creating the right breeding ground for ISIS to exist and will continue to let them do damage to all of the things we want damaged until we feel like it's time to stop them.

 

We're watching the strategy for future control of the Middle East by the US and its client states (I'm sure we'll get some nice contracts at the end) - the overriding aim is to ensure we don't actually end of with a functioning democracy anywhere, and that instead we apply our version of democratic rule. I'm sure the pieces are moving very nicely into wherever the US wants them to be - because if they weren't I'm pretty sure the pieces would be dead. Anyone who thinks we're in Iraq for any sort of moral or humanitarian reason appears to have accidentally missed 40 years of history.

 

In terms of our military power, I don't see why we maintain it - it doesn't serve a practical purpose - we're part of an empire that has the largest military might ever assembled and our role in this is to make them feel like they aren't really an empire, but part of some sort of global team - I'm sure we can do more with our huge defence budget than make Americans feel morally right and people like the Carlyle group repugnantly rich. The chances of the UK ever again embarking on any sort of unilateral military action are pretty slight I think.

 

We're that little kid that follows the school bully around and sneers, I'd rather spend the money on something else.

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The main floor with your point is that it implies that the conditions that enable IS to exist were planned, when the reality is that it's a series of poor decisions, combined with the local tribal and sectarian flavour.

I don't think the part about our military capability and our apparent colony status merits too much comment.

Edited October 2, 2014 by Ads

[maqroll]

 

At least have a bit of consistency - if you call for the de-arming, don't then demand that the military or Gov't takes immediate action to stop whatever atrocity offends you on any particular day.

 

The same can be said of various African governments, who generally want no Western interference in their affairs until their affairs spiral out of their control (Boko Haram, Ebola, etc,)

[snowychap]

The main floor with your point is that it implies that the conditions that enable IS to exist were planned, when the reality is that it's a series of poor decisions, combined with the local tribal and sectarian flavour.

I don't think that OBE's 'creating the right breeding ground' necessarily implies planning - indeed my inference would be that, as he talks about other things in terms of expedience, he may well mean something very much other than that.

Perhaps the main part of his point is actually that (some of) the conditions that enabled today's opponents to exist came about because of the 'we' ignoring warnings about what might happen and blundering in to the area without any kind of idea/care about the aftermath - i.e. the opposite of 'planning'?

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AWOL has the measure of it; you won't solve the IS problem by looking at Iraq alone. Slotting Technicals supporting the Pesh is one thing (wouldn't surprise me if it's actually YPG in there too given the recent Kurdish gains) but Syria needs addressing.

Worrying that JaN and IS seem to be getting cosy again, potentially as a consequence of the bombing campaign. Slotting Assad and dealing with somebody else in his stead (whoever Iran thinks in other words) to fracture the aims of the rebels (all 1500 odd groups of them) might not be the worse idea.

[OutByEaster?]

During our periods in control of Iraq since the first war, we've first invoked a series of sanctions so severe that the UN advisors sent out to monitor them both quit describing them as "Genocidal" and left the country entirely dependent on the dictator we were supporting at the time - then we fell out with him, we bombed them to bits again and prevented a natural democratic process whilst apportioning contracts for the management of the country and it resources at the lowest level of corporate tax anywhere in the world, thus guaranteeing large Western companies huge profits* whilst preventing anything like enough of that money accidentally finding its way back into the infrastructure that supported the Iraqi people, we allowed them a military on the basis that it would be under the control of the US until such time as those contracts came to an end, and then left them chronically underfunded and unable to self organise. If you kick a dog for long enough, it'll bite you. 

 

There are a huge number of studies that conclude that the US Strategic plan of 2002 (which we're still following) is directly responsible for the rise in Islamic extremism and the terrorism it breeds, and there are a number that further suggest that this isn't an unwanted side effect of those actions - it allows us to repeat the process that made us money in the first place, and maintain control, whilst encouraging the people in Western countries to focus on fear of a threat that barely reaches them.

 

 

*Not all Western countries were invited to the party, those that ignored the opinions of their people and joined the US were described as new Europe, those that didn't were described as Old Europe, labelled as "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys" by a compliant press and sent away to think again about the meaning of Democracy.