60,000 Dead In Gaza

18,500 were children.

This is one of the wars Trump said he'd stop with a phone call the first day.

He's 190 days behind schedule now.

Some were killed in their beds. Others while playing. Many were buried before they learned to walk.

Gaza is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Palestinian children have been killed at a rate of more than one child per hour during the war. “Consider that for a moment. A whole classroom of children killed, every day for nearly two years,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told the U.N. Security Council this month.

When asked about the death toll among children, the Israel Defense Forces said it “does not target children or other uninvolved civilians. The IDF takes extensive precautionary measures to prevent harm to civilians. The IDF operates in compliance with international law.”

Israel says its aim is to eliminate Hamas after the militant group attacked the country on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages. Thirty-eight children were killed and about three dozen were taken hostage. Hamas continues to hold about 22 hostages and the bodies of 27 others.

To assemble its list of fatalities, the Gaza Health Ministry uses hospital and morgue records, as well as vetted reports from victims’ families and reliable media. Tracking and identifying the dead has become increasingly difficult amid the breakdown of the enclave’s medical system.

Though it is impossible to capture every death, Gaza’s Health Ministry is doing “unusually high-quality real-time casualty recording,” said Michael Spagat, an economics professor at the University of London and chair of Every Casualty Counts, an international charity focused on documenting the casualties of armed conflict.

“They are trying to be really careful and rigorous and are constantly trying to improve the list,” he said.

A peer-reviewed study published January in the Lancet said an analysis of different casualty records suggests that the official death toll could be a significant undercount.

The Washington Post analyzed the ministry’s list released on July 15 and sorted the names by age.

Before 1st birthday  953
1 year old           943
2 years old          972
3 years old          899
4 years old          868
5 years old          985

6 years old          924

7 years old          967

8 years old          895

9 years old          921

10 years old         907

11 years old         976

12 years old       1,001

13 years old       1,084

14 years old       1,132

15 years old       1,064

16 years old       1,212

17 years old       1,218

Moween Shuheiber, 6, dreamed of being a pediatrician for children injured in war. Other days he wanted to be a businessman with a luxury car. Loved ones saw him as mature and thoughtful. He was killed in a November 2023 strike on an apartment building that killed more than 30 people, his cousin Adham Shuheiber said.

“I think he breathed his last while covering his ears,” said his cousin Malak Shuheiber. “Because that’s what he did every time he heard the sounds of planes.”

Tens of thousands more children have suffered life-altering injuries.

Samer Attar, an American surgeon who has volunteered in Gaza on several medical missions, says he has seen young bodies charred beyond recognition. Others had missing limbs or massive head trauma — wounds he described as “physically disabling and emotionally scarring.”

In early April, at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, Attar recalled dozens of patients on the floor after an attack. The hospital had long since run out of beds. He described seeing a 10-year-old patient take her last gasp as blood poured from her mouth and nostrils. A young boy had his skull and abdomen partly ripped open. Two of his brothers were there next to him, begging doctors to help.

“I grabbed one brother’s hand and gave him the child’s hand. I took his other brother’s hand and put it on his heart, and just said, ‘I’m sorry he’s going to die. Just wait here until he passes,’” Attar remembered telling them before moving on to the next patient.

As Israel hits Gaza with airstrikes, it has also restricted — and at times completely blocked — the United Nations and other aid organizations from delivering food, water and medical supplies. Hunger is soaring. More than 147 people, including 88 children, have died of malnutrition across Gaza, the Health Ministry said.

Most of the living have been corralled into the south of the Gaza Strip, where aid is now mostly distributed by American contractors inside military zones. Israeli soldiers positioned nearby have repeatedly opened fire on desperate families seeking aid, witnesses have told The Post. The IDF has said it fired “warning shots” to prevent “suspects from approaching.” It added that after reports of harm to civilians at aid points, the Israeli military issued instructions “following lessons learned” to forces in the field.

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while trying to get food, the U.N. human rights office said on July 22.

On July 13, an Israeli airstrike hit a crowd lining up to fill water containers in central Gaza. Ten people, most of them children, were killed.

The Israeli military called it a “technical error” with a munition that caused it to fall “dozens of meters from the target.”

Thirsty children “returned to their homes as lifeless corpses,” said Ramadan Nassar, who lives in the area and witnessed the aftermath.

WaPo goes on to list all the names of kids who've been killed in Israel's "war against Hamas", which has turned into an attempted genocide.

The List

(it's pretty gruesome)

About Last Night

We should call the failed ceasefire Operation Desert Stormy.

It was extremely brief, Trump's package was inadequate for the task, and he's trying to keep people from talking about it.

Iran

These fuckin' idiots are talking like it's all over, and everything's just peachy.

"We knocked the shit out of 'em, and that's it - piece of cake - call the writers and let's get on to the next episode."

You think the Iranians won't be looking for a little get-back? Every American everywhere is a target again. And it's not unreasonable to think they won't have plenty of sympathizers - even among countries that have always been on our side.

The US has been a very good and helpful ally. But with Trump constantly rattling sabers and shit-talking everybody, I'm not going to be surprised if we find out somewhere down the road that some of our best good buddies have already decided to walk away.

Is anybody not picking up some really strong late Roman Empire vibes here?



Following strikes on Iran, these U.S. bases could become targets

A number of U.S. military sites in the Middle East could face reprisals.

Iran vowed swift retaliation Saturday following the U.S. military’s strikes on the Iranian nuclear program. “Every American citizen or military personnel in the region is now a target,” a commentator on Iranian state media said.

In the days and weeks leading up to the attack, Iranian leaders had repeatedly warned of reprisal were a strike to occur. “All U.S. bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them,” Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh said on June 11.

Here are some of the U.S. bases and troop deployments in the region that could come under attack.

Tens of thousands of U.S. troops are stationed in the Middle East.

Al-Asad Air Base, an Iraqi installation 150 miles west of Baghdad that is operated jointly by the Iraqi and U.S. air forces, houses thousands of American troops, the largest U.S. deployment in the country. Iran and its proxies have in recent years attacked it repeatedly.

After the U.S. assassinated top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, Tehran fired 16 missiles at bases hosting U.S. forces in Iraq. Eleven landed at al-Asad, wounding dozens of U.S. troops and gouging deep craters in an attack that authorities said was intended to kill. Iran also launched missiles at a military base in Irbil, in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, during that attack.

The Trump administration said this month that it was reducing the U.S. military presence in Syria from eight bases to one: Tanf, located strategically in southern Syria near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders. Details on the timing are vague.

A January 2024 drone strike on Tower 22, a U.S. outpost in Jordan 12 miles south of Tanf, killed three American soldiers and injured dozens more, the worst attack on the U.S. military since the 2021 fall of Kabul.

Major U.S. military deployments in the Persian Gulf include Naval Support Activity Bahrain, headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet and home to some 8,300 American sailors, and the Qatari-owned al-Udeid Air Base, which boasts the largest U.S. contingent in the Middle East. Al-Udeid, 20 miles southwest of Doha, is a forward command post for U.S. Central Command and can house more than 10,000 troops.

Other Persian Gulf installations housing U.S. troops include Camp Buehring and Ali al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait, and al-Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, home to the Air Force’s 380th Air Expeditionary Wing.

Iranian officials warned the Qataris this week — before the U.S. strike — that American bases in the gulf would be legitimate targets in retaliation for an American attack, according to a European official briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive communications.

U.S. embassies and diplomatic compounds in the region could similarly become targets. The U.S. has evacuated some personnel and family members from missions in Iraq and Israel.

Militants funded by Tehran could also threaten U.S. personnel and interests in the region.

“Operational plans have been established for that purpose,” Abu Ali al-Askari, a security official with the Iranian-backed, Iraqi-based Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah, warned Thursday. “Undoubtedly, American bases throughout the region will become akin to duck-hunting grounds … not to mention the unforeseen surprises that may await its aircraft in the skies.”

Asked about preparations to head off potential Iranian reprisals, the Pentagon press office on Thursday directed The Washington Post to a Monday statement from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announcing the “deployment of additional capabilities” to the Middle East. “Protecting U.S. forces is our top priority and these deployments are intended to enhance our defensive posture in the region,” Hegseth wrote on X.

“American Forces are maintaining their defensive posture & that has not changed,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Monday, which the Pentagon press office also pointed to.

Air France and KLM canceled flights in and out of Dubai International Airport late Wednesday. The Air France press office cited “the security situation in the region.” It did not indicate when flights would resume.

Could Iran strike the United States?

While Iran possesses a diverse array of ballistic and cruise missiles, none of its arsenal, including missiles in development, could come close to reaching the United States, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies missile defense project. Iran’s air force does not have the range to reach the United States. That’s why reprisals on forces deployed in the region would be the primary U.S. concern.

Ukraine Is The Key

Help Ukraine beat Putin

Which weakens Iran

Which weakens Hamas and the Houthis

Which removes a fair part of Netanyahu's rationale for holding power

Which eases tensions across the board in the middle east

All of which tells Xi he'd better watch his ass.

That Middle East Shit

I'm not dismissing the very real problems that make life pretty fucking miserable in Israel and Gaza.

I am, however, going to mock the fuck out of the exhaustively stoopid politics it roils up here in USAmerica Inc.

Here's a fair example of what the big brained Republicans are yapping about:

That's not a plan, Kevin - that's part of a standup routine.

And BTW, on that whole 'secure our southern border' thing, here's something the Israelis found out it doesn't work for shit.

Show me a 20-foot wall, and I'll show you a guy selling 25-foot ladders.

How Hamas breached Israel’s ‘Iron Wall’

The massive, complex attack on Israel on Saturday by militants from Gaza Strip stunned Israelis, who watched in horror as fighters easily bypassed one of the world’s most advanced security systems.

At least 900 people have been killed in Israel and more than 2,600 wounded. More than 100 people have been taken captive. Israel has pounded Gaza with airstrikes, killing at least 680 people, according to Palestinian authorities.

The “smart fence” that separates Israel from Gaza is equipped with cutting-edge technology, designed to detect any security breach. This is how the militants got through.

An ‘iron wall’

In 2021 Israel announced the completion of its “smart fence,” a 40-mile-long barricade along the Gaza Strip that included an underground concrete barrier.

I don't suppose anyone would like to talk about concentration camps right about now, would they?

The project was publicly announced in 2016 after Hamas used underground tunnels to attack Israeli forces in the 2014 war. It required more than 140,000 tons of iron and steel, according to Reuters, and the installation of hundreds of cameras, radars and sensors. Access near the fence on the Gaza side was limited to farmers on foot. On the Israeli side, observation towers and sand dunes were put in place to monitor threats and slow intruders.

In 2021, then-Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the barrier placed an “iron wall” between Hamas and southern Israel.

But on Saturday, a surprise series of coordinated efforts enabled Hamas to get past the wall. The fence was breached at 29 points, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Though there were Israeli guard towers positioned every 500 feet along the perimeter of the wall at some points, the fighters appeared to encounter little resistance.

The border was minimally staffed, it soon became apparent, with much of Israel’s military diverted to focus on unrest in the West Bank.

“The most compelling parts of the system were the ones that provided indicators and warnings,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But once you don’t see in advance that someone is massed at the fence, it’s still just a fence. A big fence, but just a fence.”

1. Drones dropped explosives

Using commercial drones, Hamas bombed Israeli observation towers, communications infrastructure and weapons systems along the border.

2. Coordinated rocket fire and man power

Israel said Hamas fired more than 3,000 rockets into the country, with some reaching as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Militants on fan-powered hang gliders flew across the border.

3. Explosives along the fence

Militants also used explosives to blow up sections of the barrier. Men on motorbikes drove through the gaps.

4. Widening the gap

Bulldozers did the rest, allowing enough space for larger vehicles to drive through.

Experts said the attack would have required weeks, at least, of preparation and subterfuge.

“The key would be to move equipment into position over a period of weeks beforehand, and then put it into buildings or under tarps,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He noted that many of the vehicles could have been hidden in plain sight in parking lots or construction zones.

Still, “The idea of a bull dozer getting that close to the fence at all just boggles the mind,” Levitt said.

These idiots never watched Patton?

"Fixed fortifications 

are monuments 

to the stupidity of man."

Today's Middle East Shit

The pic below shows Hamas rockets (on the right) being defended against by the Israeli Iron Dome anti-missile system, and is being pimped as an "iconic photo" of the current blowup between Palestinians and Israelis - that it's as beautiful as it is horrific - or it's as horrific as it is beautiful - or some such nonsense.

There's nothing beautiful about anything horrific. If you actually believe there is, then you need to be shaken &/or beaten like a dirty rug. You need to go and see the result of this madness - the damage and the death - on the ground and in the light of day.

And then you can go check your fucking values.

We can't allow this hagiographic romanticizing bullshit to continue.

And Another Thing

OK, the hair-on-fire brigade got all up in arms for good reason, but it turns out that 45* is just a fucking dolt and it seems the world understands this to the point that while they take this shit very seriously, they know now that they have to be the grownups and not go too nuts when he does something that's unbelievably stoopid - even for him.

I have to think there's a strong probability that Iran is just biding their time, and they'll kick us in the nuts when they're good-n-ready.

45* gave a brief statement this morning, and somehow, for now, things are relatively calm again.

WaPo, Paul Waldman:

Five Takeaways From Trump's Deranged Speech On Iran

Having prepared carefully to deliver inspiring words that would bring all Americans together as they worry about the possibility of another war in the Middle East, President Trump stepped to the podium Wednesday morning and instead gave a brief speech that was vintage Trump: lacking in even the barest eloquence, replete with lies, delivered with garbled pronunciation and weirdly somnolent affect, and unintentionally revealing.

• Trump’s Iran policy has been a catastrophic failure.
• Trump desperately wanted to find a way to declare victory and back off.
• Trump is still obsessed with Barack Obama.
• Trump is comically insecure about his manhood.
• Trump still has no idea what he wants to accomplish with regard to Iran or how to do it.

Some fallout - so, Cynical Mike says that maybe Iran isn't in a big hurry to retaliate in kind partly because 45*'s dumbfuck move serves the purpose of "unity" and "rally 'round the Ayatollah", which makes the social oppression a little easier because it pushes down on certain protests - most notably (as usual) the movement to free middle eastern women from the repressive bullshit imposed on them by religious control freaks.

I'm thinking we'll prob'ly see less of this in Iran - young women resisting the forced hijab.

Today's Beau

Justin King, aka: Beau Of The Fifth Column

Cult45 devotees in Congress, and dimwitted red-hat voters will not be forgiven.

The Press Poodles who gave him a billion dollars in free air time will not be forgiven.

There's a right good bit of assumption and speculation in Justin's piece, but none of it is beyond the realm of real probability.

This is pretty fuckin' bad right now.

Today's Beau

Justin King -- Beau Of The Fifth Column

Today's Clusterfuck

I really don't know that much about it, but hey, this is a new era - The Golden Age of The Dunderhead - so knowing nothing qualifies me to make all the decisions, right?

It looks to me like Trump intends to throw in with Putin and Assad, and just bomb the whole thing flat.  Of course, that's the kind of thing Trump loved to say during the Scampaign® with all that crap about what a lousy leader Obama is on this one - something Grampy McDumfuck and Huckleberry Butchmeup are flogging again - which leads me to believe he has absolutely no intention of following thru on it (Mr Unpredictable, remember?).

Here's the thing: You take a Rent-Seeker like Trump and put him in charge of the US military, and you get the ultimate REMF.  Add Trump's thin skin, short temper, a propensity for revenge while hiding behind bogus "Information Sources", and you get a guy who makes lotsa bad decisions, which makes for lotsa dead people.

It's nothing but a transaction to Trump - Cost/Benefit - he gets paid while you do the work. He collects the tribute while we pay for the funerals.

Because it bears repeating: This isn't politics. This is a fucking robbery.

Beyond Words

"Aleppo is a place where the children have stopped crying." Scenes of sheer terror and grief in the last hospital in the last days of Aleppo pic.twitter.com/sy1NgjD4gY

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) December 16, 2016

Informed Comment:

After Aleppo, Russians prepare to defy Trump re: their Iran Alliance

the left-leaning Lebanese newspaper al-Safir [Ambassador] reports that the armed resistance to the regime of Bashar al-Assad in the East Aleppo pocket is finished. Reports from Wednesday morning say that the ceasefire that Russia and the regime signed onto in hopes that the few hundred hold-outs among the guerrillas would leave has now broken down amid heavy fire. Civilians also continue to flee the areas under rebel control, though the humanitarian corridors promised by Russia appear never to have materialized. The plan had been to allow some rebels to flee to Idlib, where the rebels led by al-Qaeda have a perch. Nevertheless, hundreds of rebels attempted to flee East Aleppo, as did noncombatants.

The Russian victory in Syria against fundamentalist Sunni Arab militias was made possible in part by Iran. Russian fighter jets simply bombing from on high would have been useless. It was Iran that directed the Lebanese Hizbullah and the Iraqi Shiite militias to join the fight, backing up the some 35,000 to 50,000 Syrian soldiers who remain and have not defected. The Russians gave these forces air support, bombing rebel positions until the Shiite militias and the remnants of the Syrian Arab Army could over-run them.

Nobody has any real idea what's going on in Syria except that Putin is reaping benefits by way of adding Client States to his sphere of influence, so it makes sense to me that Trump is on board - wherever there is crisis, there is opportunity.  It makes sense because it makes money, and the element of human tragedy provides Trump et al plenty of cover by allowing them to blame Obama for the whole mess (and notice, we're back to blaming Obama for everything now that Hillary has been dispatched - convenient, it ain't it?).

This looks a lot like we're taking the rise of the Authoritarians to a new level.  On a few occasions, we pay some lip service to the people caught in the middle, but the point for these assholes sounds pretty simple: 

"If those people were worthy of survival, they'd be strong like us. They aren't strong, so they're not like us, so they're not worthy. Let the snowflakes and the women and the libtards worry about weaklings - we're too busy being awesome, so fuck 'em."

Everybody Wants In On The Act

Reuters:

The German government has approved several arms export deals with countries in the Middle East, including delivery of 23 Airbus helicopters to Saudi Arabia, according to an Economy Ministry letter seen by Reuters on Monday.

On the one hand, there's something odd about being pretty sure that selling weapons to people in the Middle East is a pretty stoopid thing to do; while seeing it happen and starting to think maybe this is just what we do. Like stoopid is the new normal.

But then of course, I won't argue that Stoopid is somehow new, or that it's not particularly normal.

Anyway - it still looked like this was all about "small arms", so that's not as bad as it could be.  But then, Financial Times:

The minister cited a €1.6bn contract to sell Leopard 2 battle tanks to Qatar, “which I unfortunately can’t undo”. The deal, which received the government’s green light in 2013, was sharply criticised within Germany because of Qatar’s bombing of Yemen and its alleged support for Islamist groups in the Middle East.

I can't shake that queasy feeling whenever I see a tank with a Maltese Cross painted on it, y'know?

And the only thing worse is when one of the guys who's supposed to know what's going on just shrugs and says, "Oops - oh well, nuthin we can do about it now."

We are so fucked.

Who'da Thunk It?

I really hope there's absolutely nobody in Washington who's surprised by this shit:

Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter 5-year-old civil war.

The fighting has intensified over the past two months, as CIA-armed units and Pentagon-armed ones have repeatedly shot at each other as they have maneuvered through contested territory on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, U.S. officials and rebel leaders have confirmed.

In mid-February, a CIA-armed militia called Fursan al Haq, or Knights of Righteousness, was run out of the town of Marea, about 20 miles north of Aleppo, by Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces moving in from Kurdish-controlled areas to the east.

"Any faction that attacks us, regardless from where it gets its support, we will fight it," said Maj. Fares Bayoush, a leader of Fursan al Haq.

This is straight outa some fucked up movie.  And it's the work of an awful lotta people who really do (mostly) know what they're doing.  

Now try to imagine just how bad it gets with Trump or Cruz in the White House, running from one disaster to the next. Thanks anyway, guys.

Thanks For Clearing That Up

Meet The New Boss

George The Shrub's Excellent Adventure hasn't had quite the results he told us we could count on.

So, meet the new Saddam, same as the old Saddam.  Or maybe, meet the new Ayatollah, same as the old Ayatollah(?)

From The Week:

Who is al-Baghdadi?
He's an Islamic scholar, poet, and Sunni extremist who is as much as an enigma to his followers as he is to his enemies. Born Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai in the central Iraqi city of Samarra, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 43, is believed to have started his career as a preacher of Salafism, a hard-line form of Sunni Islam, and to have a degree in history and a doctorate in sharia law. After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, he led a Sunni militant group that fought against American troops. Captured by U.S. forces in 2005, he was held for four years at Camp Bucca, a U.S. military prison. There, he met several al Qaeda commanders. In 2009, the U.S. turned al-Baghdadi over to Iraqi authorities as part of a Bush administration agreement with the Iraqis. Col. Ken King, who oversaw Camp Bucca, recalls al-Baghdadi taunting his American captors at the time, "I'll see you guys in New York." He was quickly released by the Iraqis and used his prison contacts to take over an al Qaeda–aligned militant group, the Islamic State of Iraq. Shortly after, he began an offensive to seize territory.

We Teach Life, Sir

I am now officially in conflict with the current paradigm - OK OK, more in conflict...



Whether they are or not, Israel ends up looking like complete assholes.

hat tip = Facebook friend NFP

About That ISIS Thing In Iraq

As usual, if you wanna know what's going on, you need to find somebody like Juan Cole - somebody who might actually know what the fuck he's talking about.

But of course, that's obviously not what's on the "mind" of the average Press Poodle, who apparently still thinks it's a good idea to make us listen to a near-human pustule like Dick Cheney.

But anyway, here's Cole's take:

Already in the past week and a half, many assertions are becoming commonplace in the inside-the-Beltway echo chamber about Iraq’s current crisis that are poorly grounded in knowledge of the country. Here are some sudden truisms that should be rethought.

1. “The Sunni radicals of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are popular.” They are not. Opinion polling shows that most Iraqi Sunnis are secular-minded. The ISIS is brutal and fundamentalist. Where the Sunnis have rallied to it, it is because of severe discontents with their situation after the fall of the Baath Party in 2003 with the American invasion. The appearance of video showing ISIS massacring police (most of them Sunnis) in Tikrit will severely detract from such popularity as they enjoyed.

2. “ISIS fighters achieved victory after victory in the Sunni north.” While this assertion is true, and towns continue to fall to it, it is simplistic. The central government troops, many of them Shiite, in Mosul and in towns of the north, were unpopular because representatives of a sectarian Shiite regime. The populace of Mosul, including town quarters and clan groups (‘tribes’) on the city’s outskirts, appear to have risen up in conjunction with the ISIS advance, as Patrick Cockburn argues. It was a pluralist urban rebellion, with nationalists of a socialist bent (former Baathists) joining in. In some instances locals were suppressed by the fundamentalist guerrillas and there already have been instances of local Sunnis helping the Iraqi army reassert itself in Salahuddin Province and then celebrating the departure of ISIS.

3. “Iraqi troops were afraid to fight the radical Sunni guerrillas and so ran away.” While the troops did abandon their positions in Mosul and other towns, it isn’t clear why. There are reports that they were ordered to fall back. More important, if this was a popular uprising, then a few thousand troops were facing hundreds of thousands of angry urbanites and were in danger of being overwhelmed. In Afghanistan’s Mazar-i Sharif in 1997 when the Pashtun Taliban took this largely Tajik and Uzbek city, the local populace abided it af few days and then rose up and killed 8,000 Taliban, expelling them from the city. (A year later they returned and bloodily reasserted themselves). Troops cannot always assert themselves against the biopower of urban masses.

4. “The Sunni radicals are poised to move on Baghdad.” While ISIS as a guerrilla group could infiltrate parts of Baghdad and cause trouble, they would face severe difficulty in taking it. Baghdad was roughly 45% Sunni and 55% Shiite in 2003 when Bush invaded. But in the Civil War of 2006-7, the American military disarmed the Sunni groups first, giving Shiite militias a huge advantage. The latter used it to ethnically cleanse the capital of its Sunnis. The usually Sunni districts of the west of the city were depopulated. The mixed districts of the center became almost all Shiite. There simply isn’t much of a Sunni power base left in Baghdad and so that kind of take-over by acclaim would be very difficult to achieve in the capital. As Joshua Landis puts it, ISIS has picked a fight it cannot win.

5. “The US should intervene with air power against ISIS.” The Sunni radicals are not a conventional army. There are no lines for the US to bomb, few convoys or other obvious targets. To the extent that their advance is a series of urban revolts against the government of PM Nouri al-Maliki, the US would end up bombing ordinary city folk. The Sunnis already have resentments about the Bush administration backing for the Shiite parties after 2003, which produced purges of Sunnis from their jobs and massive unemployment in Sunni areas. For the US to be bombing Sunni towns all these years later on behalf of Mr. al-Maliki would be to invite terrorism against the US. ISIS is a bad actor, but it so far hasn’t behaved like an international terrorist group; it has been oriented to achieving strategic and tactical victories in Syria against the Baath government and the Shiite Alawis, and in Iraq against the Shiite Da’wa Party government. But it could easily morph into an anti-American international terrorist network. The US should avoid actions that would push it in that direction. So far the Baath regime in Syria is winning against the Sunni radicals. The Shiite majority in Iraq can’t easily be overwhelmed by them. Local actors can handle this crisis.

6. “US interests are threatened by the ISIS capture of Mosul.” It is difficult to see what precise interest the hawks are thinking of. Petroleum prices are slightly up because the pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan in Turkey is closed. But it only does a few hundred thousand barrels a day on good days. Most oil in Iraq is produced in Basra in the Iraqi deep south, Shiite country where ISIS is unlikely to gain sway. And in any case high petroleum prices may be good for the US. More Americans should be using public transport, moving to the city from the suburbs, buying electric vehicles and electric plug-in hybrids and putting solar panels on their roofs to power their EVs. These steps are desirable to fight climate change and for economic health. Wars for oil are so 20th century.

7. “The US should be concerned about Iranian influence in Iraq.” The American hawks’ attitude toward Iran in Iraq has all along been comical. US viceroy Jerry Bremer used to warn against “foreign” influence in Iraq, making Middle Easterners fall down laughing. Shiite Iraqis and Shiite Iranians don’t always get along, but warning Iraq against Shiite Iranian influence is like warning Italy against Vatican influence. Iran has an interest in seeing radical Sunnis rolled back in Iraq, and if ISIS is in fact a danger to US interests, then the obvious thing for the US to do would be to improve relations with Iran and cooperate with Tehran in defeating the al-Qaeda affiliates in the region. In fact, this has been the obvious course since 2001, when president Mohammad Khatami of Iran staged pro-US candle light vigils throughout Iran after 9/11. Instead, Neocons like David Frum maneuvered the Bush administration into declaring Iran part of an imaginary Axis of Evil on behalf of right-wing Israeli interests. This stance has all along been illogical. The Obama administration is said to be considering consultations with Iran about Iraq. Even Bush did that at one point. It is only logical.

A Word From Professor Cole

Juan Cole (aka the smartest guy in any room when it comes to talking about the gigundous cluster fuck polite people call The Middle East):

Why the US needs Electric Cars: Saudi Arabia threatens Pivot away from US
Posted on 10/23/2013 by Juan Cole

The royal family of Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy with no constitution and no elected legislature, is in a snit about US foreign policy. King Abdullah doesn’t like even the mild American criticism of the Sunni Bahrain monarchy’s brutal crackdown on the majority Shiite community in that country. He is furious that President Obama went with the Russian plan to sequester Syria’s chemical weapons rather than bombing Damascus. He is petrified of a breakthrough in American and Iranian relations that might permit Iran to keep its nuclear enrichment program and allow Tehran to retain a nuclear breakout capacity, which would deter any outside overthrow of the Iranian regime. Those are the stated discontents leaked by Saudi uber-hawk Bandar Bin Sultan.

Behind the scenes, another Saudi concern is that the US likes democracy too much. Washington ultimately backed the Arab upheavals that led to the fall of presidents for life in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Saudi Arabia hated this outbreak of popular politics and parliamentary competition. It connived with Egypt’s generals to roll back gains in Egypt in favor of more authoritarian rule. It has just cut off Yemen because the post-Saleh situation there isn’t developing its way. Only in Syria do the Saudis want regime change, and there it is because they want to weaken Iran and depose a Shiite ruling clique in favor of a fundamentalist Sunni one.

Egyptian Quickie

I don't know what Obama's supposed to do about Egypt - I don't know that any of it is up to anybody but the Egyptians.

What we all do know is that whatever Obama does, the Repubs are gonna shit on him for it, so he might as well take his best shot no matter how it plays in Punditsville or Kibitzburg or Blogistan.

So it comes down to this:  we have to look after our own, and in the Middle East, "our own" = Israel.  Without Egypt's willing support, the Arab-Israeli Peace Deal goes straight into the shitter and we're right back to 1977; and an Islamic Theocracy in Egypt (even a "democratically elected" one) is bad for that peace deal, which would be bad for Israel, which would be bad for us.

I don't like it; we seem to be stuck in a kind of World-According-To-Kissinger loop where we think the only thing we can do is to maintain the balance of terror.

Gotta be a better way.

Dear Mr Clinton

Yo, Bill - shut the fuck up already.  You can't get me to vote for Hillary no matter how big you want me to believe her balls are.

I dunno what we're supposed to do about Syria.  I'm not convinced we're "supposed" to do anything at all.  My default position is that we mind our own damned business, until or unless their shit starts to spill out over into our shit.

So there's the determinative question:  Who's shit is where right now, and where is that shit likely to be later on?

Another default position for me is that when it comes to the Middle East, nobody knows more about it (or about how weirdly fucked up it is) than Juan Cole - so it's always a good idea to listen to somebody who actually knows his shit.

Obama seems to be attempting to find a face-saving way of getting a little involved but not too much, by sending light weaponry (which of course is not what the rebels need).

Clinton compared what the US could do in Syria to Ronald Reagan’s effort against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. But that covert operation of giving billions of dollars and high-tech weaponry to Afghan jihadis was a huge catastrophe, contributing to the creation and rise of al-Qaeda and setting the background for the emergence of the Taliban. It surely would have been far preferable to let the Soviets try to build a socialist state in Afghanistan, as they tried in Uzbekistan. The whole thing would have fallen apart in 1991 anyway. (There is no truth to the notion that the Afghanistan war bled the Soviet Union or contributed to its collapse. Soviet military spending was flat in the 1980s). The Reagan jihad destabilized both Afghanistan and Pakistan and left us with a long term terrorism problem. We let the Soviets alone in Kazakhstan, and we never worry about today’s Kazakhstan.
You never, ever want to encourage the rise of private militias and flood a country with high- powered weaponry.

My other (and over-arching) default position is that I'm real tired of having to babysit these fuckwads all the time.