The Lebanese yawn.
Apparently, tens of thousands of civilians are facing imminent death from ISIS.
They are members of the Yazidi sect.
Apparently, the World yawns.
Jesus fucking Christ, this is crazy.
Absolutely did not expect IS to rout the Peshmerga - and it appears I’m not the only one:
So sad and horrible:
Also did not expect IS to go into Lebanon, gaining even more enemies in the process: The Lebanese Army, however weak, and Hezbollah, which generally seems to be pretty competent… Though BrainGlutton’s link above notes they have not, as of yet, joined the fight:
**Brainglutton ** I was wondering if you could make sense of this opinion I read about the Islamists, I can’t remember where it was from, but it stated that they if could try and bring about this revolution to take them back to the beginning of Islam, there is a possibility that they would find out nothing is there, I was wondering if you could make sense of that?
As for the Kurdish situation, this is increasingly looking like a ‘World War’ in the Middle East, much like that African ‘World War’ back in the 90’s and early 00’s in central Africa.
Well, I read in Islam: A Short History, by Karen Armstrong, that Mohammed’s Islam was like Judaism, not Christianity – i.e., he saw it as the ethnically-appropriate religion for Arabs alone (the children of Abraham through Ishmael, as Jews are children of Abraham through Isaac), and not the One True Faith to which all the world must ultimately convert. And for some time after Mohammed died, the expanding Islamic Empire did not encourage nor in most cases allow conquered infidels to convert to Islam, and the Arabs in the conquered lands lived in separate garrison-towns to keep them pure and uncorrupted by the local people and culture and religion. But there have been a lot of changes since then.
The above is disputable, I’ve seen it disputed on the SDMB. But, that sort of thing, perhaps. Modern Muslims – especially non-Arab Muslims – might not to want to look too close to “the beginning of Islam.” It might disturb them.
This sounds somewhat similar to the theory advanced by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook in Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World:
Does Armstrong refer to Crone’s and Cook’s book?
At least Crone has distanced herself from this early work of hers:
Her later - and presumably more mature - works, also on early Islam, sound very interesting; alas, I haven’t gotten around to reading them just yet.
Well, the Iraq army basically armed them to the teeth by running away and the Iraqi PM acted as their recruiting officer with his corrupt ‘winner takes all’ sectarian attitude . They’ve long controlled oil fields in Syria and no matter whatever the denials elements of the Saudi state have long been their backers.
They’ve become a pretty formidable army in terms of equipment, manpower and motivation and they are estimated to have billions of dollars, which means they can buy all kinds of shit no one wants people like that to have.
I’m certain that behind the scenes the USA is getting ready to administer an almighty smack-down once all the military and diplomatic ducks are lined up in a row.
Here’s a report from a Lebanese newspaper saying a deal was reached yesterday for IS to retreat from Arsal.
Here’s another one - from today - saying that the Lebanese Army now controls the town:
Is that site reliable?
As reliable as any i guess. Doesn’t helpthese fleeing Christians though.
What a bloody mess.
Cite? For the state backing them, not individual princes.
Now the Kurds are counter-attacking ISIS near Arbil – with Iraqi government air support, yet.
What the US ought to do is tell ISIS “We’ll bring back the Saddam family and the Baathists, and rearm them, like you had in the good old days when Iraq was a decent country. See if you wanna mess with them”.
Does this ISIS situation have any small parallel with the Bolsheviks revolution? Not in terms of doctrine or ideology, but in the application of terror and organisation.
The scary thing aside from the murder of non-muslim people is how ISIS has seized sophisticated weaponry from the Iraqi military they have defeated…weaponry that the US had given the Iraqi military, including things like Abrams tanks.
And the other really scary thing is me reading that the ISIS fighters now control the Mosul dam, and if they blow that sucker up, it will cause a flood of massive proportions, apparently all the way to Baghdad. That would really suck.
But doesn’t that stuff require a huge amount of training to know how to operate–and massively more on how to maintain it?
That’s for sure! Many nations have jet fighter aircraft…but how many nations train their pilots for hundreds of hours? Many nations have battle tanks, but how many have trained crews who comprehend advanced battlefield tactics?
Training is one of the preeminent “force multipliers” in modern warfare. The “highway of death” wasn’t only the result of better equipment.
There is only one way to stop ISIS or IS or whatever they are called. That is with US boots on the ground. And it will eventually morph into that.
The thing is we are back to the Vietnam syndrome in the sense of invading Iraq in the first place was absurd, a giant mistake, a glib opportunity for an oil grab plain and simple and now it’s the “once bitten, twice shy” syndrome.
So really, the only way to get support for such a move would be another outrage, “Gulf of Tonkin”, “Bengazi” type of thing to garner some support.
President Obama’s biggest accomplishment has been getting the US the heck out of there. Now, it will be very, very difficult to get support (except for the perpetual warmongers John McCain and Lindsey Graham, of course) to put US lives on the line once again with their boots on the ground, when now is when they are really needed.
That’s just the way it looks from here at the moment.
Well the Iraqis had training on how to use those Abrams, but when it came time to fight against IS they got out and ran away on foot, leaving the tanks to the enemy
Meanwhile in Syria the Islamic State has captured a large amount of heavy artillery, because the Syrians were in too much of a hurry to escape to blow the ammo dump. They’ve now brought that artillery into use against Syria’s largest airbase in Raqqa province, and will soon extirpate all Assad forces from Eastern Syria.