Iraq: Out of the desert into Mosul (closed)

[KingJaja]

How significant is this?

It might not be significant to Christian communities in the West, but I'm wondering about its impact on Christian communities in say, Africa - if the Pope adopts this kind of stance more often in the future.

My native Nigeria comes to mind.

Pope Francis on Monday said efforts to stop Islamic militants from attacking religious minorities in Iraq are legitimate but said the international community — and not just one country — should decide how to intervene.

Francis was asked if he approved of the unilateral U.S. airstrikes on militants of the Islamic State group, who have captured swaths of northern and western Iraq and northeastern Syria and have forced minority Christians and others to either convert to Islam or flee their homes.

"In these cases, where there is an unjust aggression, I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor," Francis said. "I underscore the verb 'stop.' I'm not saying 'bomb' or 'make war,' just 'stop.' And the means that can be used to stop them must be evaluated."

Francis also said he and his advisers were considering whether he might go to northern Iraq himself to show solidarity with persecuted Christians. But he said he was holding off for now on a decision.

The pope's comments were significant because the Vatican has vehemently opposed any military intervention in recent years. Pope Paul VI famously uttered the words "War never again, never again war" at the United Nations in 1965 as the Vietnam War raged, a refrain that has been repeated by every pope since. St. John Paul II actively tried to head off the Iraq war on the grounds that a "preventive" war couldn't be justified. He repeatedly called for negotiations to resolve the crisis over Iraq's invasion of Kuwait a decade prior.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...ities-25024475

[OUTLAW 09]

I had mentioned several times that the IS is not the AQ and had up to and until they were attacked by US bombers and drones not uttered a single aggressive word against the US.

By attacking them in an open and aggressive way we have now unlocked a far greater threat than AQ was ever to us---why---these guys have literally now a world wide pull for young fighters that AQ never did nor could get thus the single one off attack in 9/11 which succeeded due to intel failures of the US and the lack of airline companies willing to pay for 3K USD security doors.

And these young fighters travel legally with valid passports and most are not known to the various national intelligence agencies.

We now see that even Obama realizes in statements that the GWOT that he wanted to get an exit ramp on has now cost us another ten years of confrontations and will in the end still have the same outcome for Iraq as the core issues are not being addressed.

It is the core issue of the resolution of the Sunni Shia clash, and the clash of the regional hegomones Iran and the KSA with a rising hegemon Turkey.

Not to say the issue with a new Kurdish state that even the EU has stated they do not want to occur.

[Dayuhan]

It is the core issue of the resolution of the Sunni Shia clash, and the clash of the regional hegomones Iran and the KSA with a rising hegemon Turkey.

These are indeed core issues, but they aren't issues that the US, or anyone else, is going to resolve any time soon. The Sunni/Shi'a or Saudi/Iran clash has been going on a long time, and is likely to go on a whole lot longer: both sides are going to snipe at each other directly and fight with each other by proxy for a long time, with neither able to win and neither likely to accept a negotiated solution. Does the US really need to take sides in that dispute, or to get involved in it?

Not to say the issue with a new Kurdish state that even the EU has stated they do not want to occur.

That's going to be a problem, because the only way to prevent the emergence of a Kurdish state is to keep Iraq together as a coherent nation. Is anyone willing to commit to that objective, and is anyone likely to achieve it? I certainly don't think it's a suitable objective for the US.

[OUTLAW 09]

These are indeed core issues, but they aren't issues that the US, or anyone else, is going to resolve any time soon. The Sunni/Shi'a or Saudi/Iran clash has been going on a long time, and is likely to go on a whole lot longer: both sides are going to snipe at each other directly and fight with each other by proxy for a long time, with neither able to win and neither likely to accept a negotiated solution. Does the US really need to take sides in that dispute, or to get involved in it?



That's going to be a problem, because the only way to prevent the emergence of a Kurdish state is to keep Iraq together as a coherent nation. Is anyone willing to commit to that objective, and is anyone likely to achieve it? I certainly don't think it's a suitable objective for the US.

Totally correct assumptions.

What is going on in Iraq and Syria--let them settle it and offer as far as possible humanitarian aid and advice and consultations towards and end state---it is just the US does not know what the end state is going to be so it should sit tight and wait---the populations on the ground will work it out.

The hegemons Iran, KSA and Turkey although Turkey is still viewed as the Ottomann empire will need in the end to figure it out which they will and as they do so will the Sunni/Shia problem be resolved.

[OUTLAW 09]

Even the Germans are taken notice of the IS battlefield tactics speed coupled with the aggressiveness of swarm attacks, and we supposedly did not see this development in Iraq starting late 2005?

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/auslan...-a-986826.html

[davidbfpo]

Richard Barrett, ex-SIS (MI6) and UN, has been interviewed and is scathing about intervention in Iraq / Syria. I have cited him at length, editing out gaps in the article:http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014...&utm_hp_ref=uk

....does rather play to the [jihadist] narrative that these bad regimes are being supported by outside powers and, therefore, if you get too close to overthrowing them, the outside powers will come and beat you up.

The people who were "going to fight [Bashar Al] Assad or [former Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al] Maliki are now seeing a broader enemy" in the form of the US and UK governments. "The argument that they could also achieve the same [result] by [conducting] terrorist attacks in Western countries becomes stronger [though] not necessarily inevitable.


If ISIS pull back from Mosul, as a result of air strikes, they're not going to disappear, they'll still be out there...Their justification will be: 'If it hadn't been for air strikes we would be fine, establishing our caliphate [in Iraq].. Why did you mess with us? Now we'll mess with you.


(Citing Libya) military intervention without a proper plan to follow up had all sorts of unintended consequences and led to chaos and instability"


He also noted how Cameron has conceded that the struggle against Islamic State and other jihadist groups is ultimately a fight within the Muslim-majority world, between moderates and extremists, but asked: "If that's the case then what are we doing there? Where are the Saudi aircraft? There's a disconnect between what [Cameron's] saying and what's he's doing.


You start with some air strikes then you have a few more, then we need people down there to tell us where targets are [so] we put special forces in, then they're in a pickle and they need force protection, before you know it, we're drawn down this road that has no obvious ending..



Military action, said Barrett, should always be a last resort and isn't the "tool that is going to solve the [Islamic State] problem. Look at Libya, look at Afghanistan, look at Iraq in 2003. It's just reaching for a hammer because it is a hammer and it's to hand."

[JWing]

Outlaw there was a report in a Kurdish paper that the PUK called in Iranian advisers to help it with Jalawla, Diyala. Another story had Iranian mobilization along the border as well.