Iraq: Out of the desert into Mosul (closed)

[carl]

Boy Slap, are people mad at you. But you are on to something which people are loath to admit. This is about religion. And you and American Pride are both onto something when you guys point at Saudi Arabia. I don't advocate flattening Mecca and Medina, that would be foolish, but something has to be done about Saudi Arabia. For whatever reason they have been heavily subsidizing officially and unofficially Wahabism throughout the world for decades. Wahabi is not synonymous with peaceful tolerance and they spend billions and billions pushing it everywhere they can. Thanks to fracking maybe we can finally admit what they are up to and do something about it.

There is something else about the Saudis that I comment upon but never get a response to. They are using Western benignity to destroy us. What I mean by that is this. If the Western culture was now as it was in the 17th or 18th century, we wouldn't be worrying about what the Saudis do because they would have no money to do it with. We would have just taken the oil and that would be that. But our values advanced beyond that and we now pay them for the oil found there, oil that we extract because they can't do it themselves.. They in turn can be viewed as using that money to promote and subsidize an ideology that seeks to destroy us. That does not seem wise to me. We should tell them to stop or else.

[carl]

Outlaw 09:

Zenpundit mention in a recent post that the IS took Sinjar using a combination of snipers and artillery. Do know about that or have any details about it?

[ganulv]

There is something else about the Saudis that I comment upon but never get a response to. They are using Western benignity to destroy us. What I mean by that is this. If the Western culture was now as it was in the 17th or 18th century, we wouldn't be worrying about what the Saudis do because they would have no money to do it with. We would have just taken the oil and that would be that. But our values advanced beyond that and we now pay them for the oil found there, oil that we extract because they can't do it themselves.. They in turn can be viewed as using that money to promote and subsidize an ideology that seeks to destroy us. That does not seem wise to me. We should tell them to stop or else.

You can’t get around a layer of expenses, though. Payment is going to go towards the maintenance of a Colonial Office or to the House of Saud. It’s a trade-off.

[carl]

You can’t get around a layer of expenses, though. Payment is going to go towards the maintenance of a Colonial Office or to the House of Saud. It’s a trade-off.

The important point is the use of the money, civil servant pensions or Wahibism? Who is more likely to cut your throat?

[KingJaja]

Boko Haram warned Christians to flee Northern Nigeria in January 2012. Nobody can tell my that the similarity between this an ISIS behaviour is mere happenstance. This is a face of Islam, that many of us are too "politically correct" to confront.

(CNN) -- The militant Islamist group Boko Haram has issued an ultimatum giving Christians living in northern Nigeria three days to leave the area amid a rising tide of violence there.
A Boko Haram spokesman, Abul Qaqa, also said late Sunday that Boko Haram fighters are ready to confront soldiers sent to the area under a state of emergency declared in parts of four states by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on Saturday.
"We will confront them squarely to protect our brothers," Abul Qaqa said during a telephone call with local media. He also called on Muslims living in southern Nigeria to "come back to the north because we have evidence they will be attacked."
Recent weeks have seen an escalation in clashes between Boko Haram and security forces in the north-eastern states of Borno and Yobe, as well as attacks on churches and assassinations. Nearly 30 people were killed on Christmas Day at a Catholic church near the federal capital, Abuja -- a sign that Boko Haram is prepared to strike beyond its heartland.
Human rights activist Shehu Sani told CNN that the latest Boko Haram threat is credible, but many Christians born and raised in the north have nowhere else to go.
"The killings will continue," he said, and Boko Haram may respond to the state of emergency by taking its campaign of violence to areas not yet affected.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/02/wo...ons/index.html

[ganulv]

Boko Haram warned Christians to flee Northern Nigeria in January 2012. Nobody can tell my that the similarity between this an ISIS behaviour is mere happenstance. This is a face of Islam, that many of us are too "politically correct" to confront.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/02/wo...ons/index.html

It’s a face, and I have no trouble acknowledging that. But it’s not the whole. People were waking to burning crosses in front of their yards within the living memory of the part of the U.S. where I grew up. That movement was made up of Christians with a certain take on Christianity. Only a Richard Dawkins type would say it is representative of all Christians or that it is an inevitable outcome of the religion.

[KingJaja]

It’s a face, and I have no trouble acknowledging that. But it’s not the whole. People were waking to burning crosses in front of their yards within the living memory of the part of the U.S. where I grew up. That movement was made up of Christians with a certain take on Christianity. Only a Richard Dawkins type would say it is representative of all Christians or that it is an inevitable outcome of the religion.

It is growing at an alarming rate - just like those cross burners were an issue in the 1920s & 30s - these folks are an issue today.

And they're a lot more dangerous than cross burners.

[OUTLAW 09]

It has had nothing to do with Wahhabism or the KSA---it has been all about the Shia Sunni split and the drive between Iran since Khomeini to expand Shia influence inside the Muslim world which clashes with that of the KSA and their defense of the Sunni global community and then in turn the regional hegemony clash between both Iran and the KSA.

The use of Wahhabism was the KSA attempt to control that Sunni global community and at the same time encircle the Shia global community with what they viewed a purer form of Sunni Islam.

Actually the KSA has been over the last ten years backing off (have actually cut back their funding and training enters) of the deep Wahhabism global drive but in the end has been supporting the AQI in Syria due to the Shia Sunni conflict.

Right now there is an estimated 3K Saudi's (many former military trained types) fighting with the IS and the KSA has broken up a large IS cell recently inside the KSA.

The IS has been actually threatening the destruction of the twin holy sites in the last week as they now view the KSA as not being radical enough--actually they do not view the KSA to be Takfiri enough for them. There is some indications in informal polling that the young generation inside the KSA are now more and more identifying with the IS and their messaging. By the way Wahhabism is not the same thing as Takfirism inside Sunni Islam.

Check the IS Caliphates' map they released when they called out the Caliphate---they are taking Islam back to the golden age of the expanded influence they had in Spain, North Africa and the Arabian peninsular and that appeals to the young Muslim of today.

IS has now become a direct threat to the KSA as well as a direct threat to Iran due to their deep Salafist hate of the Shia and any other religion that is not Salafist.

This is not a Christian Islam thing ---it is a pure Sunni power politics debate for the heart and soul of the Sunni global community.

[ganulv]

The important point is the use of the money, civil servant pensions or Wahibism? Who is more likely to cut your throat?

Neither is sustainable. Nor completely safe, as de Gaulle discovered.

[AmericanPride]

The important point is the use of the money, civil servant pensions or Wahibism? Who is more likely to cut your throat?

I don't think the Saudis are unresponsive to U.S. diplomatic pressure. The House of Saud has close relationships many U.S. business interests and political families (most notably, the Bush family). But the Saudis are also deeply insecure about their governorship of the country, given the intense reactionary sentiment of the religious establishment. If it comes between appeasing Washington or appeasing the religious base, the Saudis will choose the religious base without fail. Of course, it doesn't help that the U.S. abandons its emphasis on democratic reform at the slightest hint of instability in the Gulf.

My point is that there are few pressures for moderation and reform within Saudi Arabia (though it does exist at a grassroots level to a small extent) - that pressure needs to come from the West, particularly the U.S. Conflict produces cycles of escalation and radicalization, and we are seeing that culminate with ISIS after 13 years of the War on Terrorism. But even militarily defeating ISIS in Iraq (assuming it's possible) doesn't remove the more fundamental structural problems at the foundation of conflict in the Middle East. And I think foremost among those is democratic revolution in Saudi Arabia.

[AmericanPride]

Boy Slap, are people mad at you. But you are on to something which people are loath to admit. This is about religion.

Religion is often the expression of unresolved economic, political, or social contradictions. The wave of militant Islam did not emerge in a vacuum - it grew out of the conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s that simultaneously de-legitimized 'traditional' structures of power (Arab nationalism, colonialism, etc) and radicalized new ideologies of resistance. It's not a coincidence that all of the major militant Islamist organizations, with the exception of the Muslim Brotherhood, emerged after this period. And they've been gaining strength because those same unresolved problems inherited from the early post-Cold War period are still largely present. Discontent is what keeps movements like ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah active.

Cast over Saudi policy is the long shadow of remaining religiously legitimate in the context of Wahhabism - and that means rejecting to a large extent Western values. Hard to maintain that legitimacy while flowing the wealth earned from selling oil to the West in vast quantities; hence the schizophrenic nature of Saudi behavior. The seizure of the Grand Mosque pushed the Saudi elites to the right - and so has the Arab Spring but to a more limited extent. Until this central problem is resolved at the core of the Saudi state, I expect the issue of Saudi sponsored terrorism to persist.

[Dayuhan]

Thanks to fracking maybe we can finally admit what they are up to and do something about it.

The impact of fracking is much overrated. Whether or not the US actually buys Saudi oil, we still need Saudi production to continue unabated, because any serious interruption to Saudi production would send the world oil price through the roof, producing economic chaos... and our domestically produced oil is sold at prevailing market price: the difference between WTI, Brent, and Dubai prices is generally negligible.

There is something else about the Saudis that I comment upon but never get a response to. They are using Western benignity to destroy us. What I mean by that is this. If the Western culture was now as it was in the 17th or 18th century, we wouldn't be worrying about what the Saudis do because they would have no money to do it with. We would have just taken the oil and that would be that. But our values advanced beyond that and we now pay them for the oil found there, oil that we extract because they can't do it themselves.. They in turn can be viewed as using that money to promote and subsidize an ideology that seeks to destroy us. That does not seem wise to me. We should tell them to stop or else.

Or else what?

[slapout9]

Boy Slap, are people mad at you. But you are on to something which people are loath to admit. This is about religion. And you and American Pride are both onto something when you guys point at Saudi Arabia. I don't advocate flattening Mecca and Medina, that would be foolish, but something has to be done about Saudi Arabia. For whatever reason they have been heavily subsidizing officially and unofficially Wahabism throughout the world for decades. Wahabi is not synonymous with peaceful tolerance and they spend billions and billions pushing it everywhere they can. Thanks to fracking maybe we can finally admit what they are up to and do something about it.

There is something else about the Saudis that I comment upon but never get a response to. They are using Western benignity to destroy us. What I mean by that is this. If the Western culture was now as it was in the 17th or 18th century, we wouldn't be worrying about what the Saudis do because they would have no money to do it with. We would have just taken the oil and that would be that. But our values advanced beyond that and we now pay them for the oil found there, oil that we extract because they can't do it themselves.. They in turn can be viewed as using that money to promote and subsidize an ideology that seeks to destroy us. That does not seem wise to me. We should tell them to stop or else.

Hi carl,
Yea I know there are hit squads out looking for me

You may find this of some interest even if nobody else does. Israel and what they are doing is a perfect example of what I am talking about. It is called "Equivalent Retaliation" ###-for-Tat is the slang term. It literally means if you attack me I will attack you back in the same way, if you stop I will stop, if you continue I will continue. "Counter Value" means if you strike civilian targets I will hit back at civilian targets. If you attack my church I will attack your mosque,etc. And is not illegal or a war crime as it is often believed to be. The Prime Minister of Israel ended up having to explain this to the President of the UN recently.

Wilf published an excellent article recently on Strategy (over at his journal) and how brutal Strategy may have to be in order to be effective. It is not very Politically correct so I want post a link but you know where it is. He even sighted a TV program I watch and recommend to people it is called "Sons Of Anarchy" new season is about to start as a way to learn effective Strategy. Later