Thursday, August 21, 2014

ISIS is the new ultimate enemy

ISIS is one of the Saudi-funded Sunni radical groups being employed to devastate Syria. Syria's dictator, Assad, is a monster who tortures children. But that's not why he's being attacked. He belongs to the Baath Party, which was an Arab nationalist movement that advocated secular development based on the policies of autarchic industrialization pursued by the Soviets under Stalin. In other words, an independent, nationalist movement.

And that's why Assad has to go. Even if it turns out that his military is strong enough (thanks partially to continued Russian and Chinese assistance) to fight the terrorist militias to a standstill, and, more, ruthless enough to keep fighting for years, even if 170,000 are killed and millions more made refugees. In that, he's as cynical and ruthless and murderous as Washington's foreign policy elite and the Saudi autocrats who are the other side of this catastrophe.

170,000 killed because of these monsters.

ISIS was able to send a two-mile long caravan of white trucks into Iraq and conquer large portions of it, partly because Obama wanted Iraq's Prime Minister Maliki to step down. Maliki is a murderous dictator, but that's not Obama's problem with him. Maliki is a Shiite who has oppressed the Sunni minority. But Obama doesn't care about that either. Maliki's sins are to be too cozy with Iran and to have refused to allow US troops to stay in Iraq with legal immunity.

ISIS also helped to convince the Kurds against declaring out-right independence, but to instead remain part of a weak, fractured Iraq which can be dealt with more easily than three separate, cohesive entities.

And that is why it was "This far and no farther" for ISIS. They've done their job. But they're insane religious lunatics who massacre entire communities if they believe in the wrong delusions. That's why they're being targeted for air-strikes now.

But ISIS knew that. And that's why they're kidnapping US American journalists and promising to kill them one by one. They expected Obama to betray them. This homicidal hostage-taking was their planned response.

And so we have a new "Great Satan." A new group of monsters for Obama (or whatever other figurehead happens to be in charge) to stand-up to, and justify US military action in the world. A new chance for the Washington foreign policy elite to dazzle us with their hypocrisy. A new chance for the US corporate media to display their stenographic skills.

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