Trouble in Mosul

[endfire79]

"Iraqi authorities are determined to recapture the northern city of Mosul after most of it was overrun by al-Qaeda-inspired militants, the provincial governor said Wednesday, after himself fleeing from the city."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/iraq/article19113613/

That's not good. Think the current Iraqi government can push back?  The Turkish consulate was also taken over.

[Centurion40]

Lots of Kurds around Mosul.  AFAIK, the Kurds follow a different branch of Sunni Islam than the Arabs.  Not sure how that will play into the current events.

[Airborne Rifles]

If the Iraqi government uses Kurdish troops to try to retake the city...my money is on the Kurds.

[Gusington]

Latest news is that they also took Tikrit and one other large city, as well as 50 Turkish hostages including a Turkish Army general.

[skeptical.platypus]

These are the ISIS guys as I understand it. They are completely idiotic enough to not recognize erdogan would LOVE to wag his dog right through the kurds on his border and get his people unified behind an enemy other than him. Turkish hostages and an inability of the Iraqi army to protect it's own cities and borders is a perfect excuse.

It's almost like they are intentionally trying to provoke the Turks. I don't see how dragging turkey into iraq or syria helps ISIS, except that their kind of tyranny is most easily peddled in chaos.

[JasonPratt]

Could this be a trigger for Kurdish independence at last?   ???

[Gusington]

It's definitely going to be a trigger for the Turkish Army to deploy over the border like they have before and right some wrongs done to them.

[skeptical.platypus]

Could this be a trigger for Kurdish independence at last?   ???

Or a trigger for Kurdish extermination.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/zaman-syria-kurds-rojava-ypg-muslim-pyd-pkk-turkey-isis.html


A NATO member backing ISIS. That's going to make for an interesting security meeting, regardless if it's true.

[eyebiter]

.

[Centurion40]

This is Syria.  The grey is controlled by ISIS, yellow- Kurds, red- Assad, green- others.



If ISIS gains control over north-west Iraq, they could have good chunk of real estate straddling Iraq and Syria.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/11/world/meast/iraq-predictions-revisited/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

According to the video in this CNN story, the US trained and equipped Iraqi forces melted away in the face of ISIS- much in the same way that their predecessors melted-away in the face of US & British forces in Gulf War II, and Coalition forces in Gulf War I.

Looks to me that the Iraqi nation built in the 20th century is doomed to fracture.

[endfire79]

It's really a bunch of clans, cultures or religious groups is it not?  (maybe Sunni/Shiite/Kurdish states would have been easier to manage).

I guess the Kurds felt snubbed by the current Shiite regime at some point.  ISIS is drumming up support from disaffected Sunnis not content with the regime.  These ISIS guys now have a lot of cash as well after hitting the banks in Mosul.  I wonder who their original backers are.

Hope the Iraqi's can get their stuff together enough to fight back. 

[skeptical.platypus]

I wonder how Iran feels about the enemy of their ally taking over a city of their former enemy and defeating enemy fighters equipped and trained by the Great Satanic Enemy of Them All. I wonder how the US administration feels about possibly being the enemy of Iran's enemy. (I guess that's already being played out in syria)

The Middle East. One of the world's greatest depositories of energy and enemies. What could possibly go wrong right?

[skeptical.platypus]

This is Syria.  The grey is controlled by ISIS, yellow- Kurds, red- Assad, green- others.



If ISIS gains control over north-west Iraq, they could have good chunk of real estate straddling Iraq and Syria.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/11/world/meast/iraq-predictions-revisited/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

According to the video in this CNN story, the US trained and equipped Iraqi forces melted away in the face of ISIS- much in the same way that their predecessors melted-away in the face of US & British forces in Gulf War II, and Coalition forces in Gulf War I.

Looks to me that the Iraqi nation built in the 20th century is doomed to fracture.

Helluva choice for your average Iraqi, huh? You can be part of a "nation" held together by a tyrannical fucktard willing and able to wage biological warfare on the brownie kurds to the north and establish a political machine badly favoring a particular sect. Or you can have foreigners invade you until the fucktard is flushed out of his goat hole and the political machine outlawed into insurgency, all in the name of your freedom, until the invaders get tired of the blood, money, and machines it takes to tell you how to have a government and security.

Looks to me like american nation building in the 21st century is doomed to failure. Both at home and abroad.

[GDS_Starfury]

I'm still in the let them all kill each other camp.

[JasonPratt]

This may not be popular to say, but we could only fail at nation-building in this situation.

Had we actually been what people accused us of, colonial imperialists, but colonials dedicated to making actual states of the union out of our territories (where large and populated enough to apply), we might have succeeded, because we would have been seriously invested in making the region safe and workable in the long run.

But that would have transgressed against the United Nations commitment to national sovereignty at any cost. I understand that commitment, and I even understand the 'at any cost' part because if exceptions are allowed then how should the UN determine grounds to approve the exceptions? The UN was barely okay with neutralizing Saddam's military (and that only after he violated national sovereignty); they were never okay with removing Saddam and creating a new government there.

Still, trying to respect national sovereignty insofar as possible (if not quite at all costs) is a big reason why we left. Which makes our talk about acting to foster and preserve human rights in the area sound like rubbish: we must have gone in and then left again for our own expediency, right? We've only proven (on this calculus) that we weren't seriously committed to helping the Iraqi people as people.