Category Archives: Iraq

Rand Paul Blows With The Political Winds

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Middle East

The media-military-industrial-congressional complex has won. Non-stop propaganda from this monolithic lot has convinced Americans of the necessity of another offensive in Iraq. According to a NBC/WSJ poll:

… 61% of American voters believe that the United States taking military action against ISIS is in United States’ interest, versus 13% who don’t. (Another 24% said they don’t know enough to have an opinion.) That’s a significant change when a similar question was asked last year about the U.S. taking possible action against Syria’s government after its reported use of chemical weapons. Back then, only 21% said action was in the nation’s interest, while 33% said it wasn’t.

As the political winds blow so does Rand Paul. Rand has now reversed course to please the opinion-shaping Idiocracy—Republicans, Democrats, and their attendant enablers in media, having previously exhibited some insights as to the US’s “unhinged” foreign policy:

… We aided those who’ve contributed to the rise of the Islamic State. The CIA delivered arms and other equipment to Syrian rebels, strengthening the side of the ISIS jihadists. Some even traveled to Syria from America to give moral and material support to these rebels even though there had been multiple reports some were allied with al Qaeda. …
… A more realistic foreign policy would recognize that there are evil people and tyrannical regimes in this world, but also that America cannot police or solve every problem across the globe. Only after recognizing the practical limits of our foreign policy can we pursue policies that are in the best interest of the U.S.
The Islamic State represents a threat that should be taken seriously. But we should also recall how recent foreign-policy decisions have helped these extremists so that we don’t make the same mistake of potentially aiding our enemies again.

Since August 27, a mere days, Rand has change course, “announcing that he supports military action to eliminate the Islamist group”:

“The military means to achieve these goals include airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria,” the Kentucky Republican and likely 2016 presidential hopeful wrote in an op-ed in TIME. “Such airstrikes are the best way to suppress ISIS’s operational strength and allow allies such as the Kurds to regain a military advantage.”
Paul’s hawkish turn comes after months of hedging and skeptical comments regarding U.S. involvement in Iraq and Syria. Yet Paul boasted on Thursday that as president he would have committed to a grand plan to eliminate ISIS earlier and more effectively than President Obama.
“If I had been in President Obama’s shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS,” Paul said. “I would have called Congress back into session—even during recess.”
Paul’s new position challenges his longtime reputation as a champion of non-interventionism

Meantime, RT reports that Steven Sotloff, beheaded by ISIS, “was sold to ISIS by ‘moderate’ Syrian rebel group.” The ones we are assisting, presumably. We “don’t know Shiite from Shinola.” We’re dangerous at foreign policy.

Better that the US stops degrading the Syrian Army; leaves the Islamic State In the Levant to Syria and Iran and the Arab League. If the players in the region are unconcerned about curtailing this ghastly gang, it is probably because the US keeps enabling their inertia with futile interventions.

He Doesn’t Have a Strategy. OMG!

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Middle East, Neoconservatism, War

Hussein doesn’t have a strategy to police the world. Good. I have one for him: First do no harm. The chicken hawks at Fox News, however, are hot for war. The headlines there practically scream:

Obama on Syria: ‘We don’t have a strategy yet’
Krauthammer: Obama’s strategy ‘is to do absolutely nothing’

What precisely did Obama say that has chicken hawk Chucky so cross with the president: He “told reporters Thursday that ‘we don’t have a strategy yet’ for confronting ISIS on a regional level.”

Megyn Kelly, whose show has degenerated into a rah-rah, flag-waving, hour-long session, bemoaning outrages over diminished US world hegemony, shook her head in dismay at Mike Huckabee’s excellent suggestion: Let the Arab League deal with ISIS.

Yeah, the neighborhood, Israel included, doesn’t seem particularly concerned about ISIS. Or perhaps the US has enabled inertia and apathy with its interventions.

The illogic I don’t get is this: How can media members worry about ISIS in the Levant, when America’s southern border is utterly open? Can they be that stupid? Why not challenge the president about the real danger of failing to defend the homeland’s borders?

UPDATED: ISIS Is Islam

Barack Obama, Bush, Christianity, Europe, IMMIGRATION, Iraq, Islam, Judaism & Jews

“ISIS Is Islam” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“ISIL” is how President Barack Obama refers to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He pronounces it as one would the last syllable in “Moishel,” giving it the ring of a Yiddish diminutive. Yiddish adds an “-l or –ele” suffix to signify affection. “ISIL,” the more expansive appellation preferred by the president, stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Obama was set to tee off on the golf course, when the outfit released footage of its latest bloodletting in Iraq: a video clip depicting the handsome head of American photojournalist James Foley being sawed off by a masked man with a British accent—yes, the West either admits these Muhammadans through mass immigration, or grows them at home in hothouses of multiculturalism.

The life of another journalist, Steven Sotloff, now hangs by a thread.

Unlike our Israeli and European allies, the U.S. government does not haggle for the lives of its countrymen. In fairness, Obama had at least made attempts to rescue poor Mr. Foley. His predecessor, Genghis Bush, sat bone idle, never lifting a bloodstained finger to spare Paul Johnson, Nick Berg, Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, of blessed memory, who also met the most ghastly fate imaginable: beheading.

Even before these men were headless, they were faceless to Bush and his followers.

From Martha’s Vineyard, Obama addressed the media. His response to the beheading of Mr. Foley exhilarated the groupies at CNN. “The entire world is appalled,” the president intoned solemnly. It shocks the conscience of the world. Foley was a good man who stood for “hope and civility.” The killers are craven cowards. They have no ideology, only an “empty vision.” They offer their neighbors nothing but “nihilistic” horror.

“ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim. No faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day,” asserted Obama, before scampering back to his game.

Don’t be too harsh on the White House’s current occupant for symbolically severing the ISIS snake head from its Islamic body and tail. His predecessor was as devoted to promoting the Religion of Peace pie-in-the-sky. When it comes to anodyne assurances about Islam’s compatibility with diversity and democracy, Bush was every bit the delusional dhimmi that Obama is. …

… The complete column is “ISIS Is Islam,” now on WND.

UPDATE 8/22: At last, a fun Jewish response to the intro of “ISIS Is Islam.” It comes from music man Ira Newborn (http://barelyablog.com/isis-is-islam/), who writes:

Dear Ketseleh,
You are so right to correct Hussein about his pronunciation of ISIL and
you should certainly let him know that to properly show fatherly or avuncular affection for what is just a tiny little caliphate, he should refer to it as “ISILeh” or “mine shaneh isileh.”
XXXXXXXX
Iraleh

I guess not many people get our humor.

UPDATED: Masada on Mount Sinjar (ISIS Crisis Continued)

Ancient History, Europe, History, Iraq, Israel, Jihad, Media, States' Rights

“Masada on Mount Sinjar” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Purportedly, forty thousand refugees, among them 25,000 children, were said to be stranded on the parched terrains of the Sinjar, in scorching heat, without sustenance. That is until Barack Obama broke up the gathering. Overnight. “That’s enough, Yazidis. Go home, now. The crisis is over.” Yes, the president and his minions have pronounced the catastrophe on the Sinjar Mountains over. However, just because the Obama machine declares it so, does not make it so. I would point BHO believers to Channel 4 veteran reporter Jonathan Rugman, who questions—even mocks—the administration’s rapid, fact-finding methodology:

Crisis, what crisis? The Americans have ruled out a military airlift of Yazidis stranded on Mount Sinjar on the grounds that the situation is not as bad as previously thought. … Are the Americans saying that the refugees are not spread out any more but have either been shepherded or moved into a concentrated area where they can be counted?

Let us, then, stick with Mr. Rugman’s findings, shall we? As the courageous correspondent has discovered, the Kurd-coordinated airdrops are executed by only four helicopters (one has since crashed), allotted by Baghdad. Emergency supplies are available in abundance at various nodal points; not so the means to deliver them. Priorities set by the central government do not include “rescuing a little known Yazidi minority in Kurdistan, a region which wants to break away from Iraq and become its own country.”

The Kurds assisting those marooned on the mountains would like to secede from the morass that is Iraq. Alas, the master puppeteers in Washington have hitherto been wedded to a unified (at the point of a gun) Iraq, dominated by a strong (sectarian and corrupt) central authority. This White House, and the one before it, fetishizes Iraqi national unity. It believes that to succeed, Iraqis should be like Americans, forever imprisoned in an arranged, unhappy political marriage. …

… Read the complete column. “Masada on Mount Sinjar” is now on WND.

UPDATE (8/15): If there is one constant you can trust it is that he lies. They all lie. “Break it up, Yazidis. Go home, now. The crisis is over,” Obama announced to the world, Thursday. I guess the president was attempting to will a new reality with words. The American media bought it and scattered. I was quite comfortable that “Masada on Mount Sinjar” was closer to the truth than Obama’s agitprop, even though it was submitted before his “Yazidis disperse” injunction.

Indeed, the ISIS crisis continues. Thirty miles from Sinjar, on Friday afternoon, reports BBCNews, “Militants in northern Iraq … massacred at least 80 men from the Yazidi faith in a village and abducted women and children.”

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