Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 6:51pm

Isis Waning

 

 

As predicted here, it is up fast and down fast for the ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, terrorists.  Strategy Page continues to provide the best coverage of events in Iraq on the net:

August 19, 2014: Kurdish troops have forced ISIL (al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant) fighters out of the Mosul Dam on the Tigris River. ISIL seized control of the dam on August 3 rd. This is the largest dam in Iraq and because of shoddy construction during the 1980s requires constant maintenance to prevent it from failing. If the dam did come down over half a million Iraqis could die from the flood and subsequent water shortages. The Kurds had been defending the dam since the Iraqi Army ran away in early June. ISIL also seized two nearby Kurdish held towns as they went after the dam.

This ISIL advance was not unexpected because the Kurds stretched themselves thin by trying to replace the Iraqi Army while also building and defending a new fortified border to incorporate Kirkuk and nearby oilfields. The Kurds asked for air support from the United States but did not start receiving it until the 8th. The Americans had already shipped in ammo and light weapons and some additional American trainers and advisors.

ISIL hit the Kurds with multiple columns of vehicles carrying armed men. This force included some suicide bombers and there were more ISIL gunmen coming from more directions than the small Kurdish force could handle. After a day or so of holding off ISIL the Kurds were ordered to withdraw and they did that in an orderly fashion on the 3rd. The Kurds organized a counterattack force and moved to regain the lost territory once the U.S. agreed to resume air support. There are still some ISIL gunmen in the vicinity of the dam, as well as some mines and booby-traps the Islamic terrorists set before they left. Kurdish forces are taking care of this.

In the Euphrates River Valley, near the town of Haditha, local Sunni tribes have rebelled against ISIL to maintain control of another major dam. This is a major setback for ISIL, which expected the Sunni tribes to support them and take care of local security. It’s an old story being replayed. The local tribesmen are not happy with ISIL efforts to force a strict Islamic lifestyle on them. Iraqi and Syria Sunnis have come to prefer educating their daughters and enjoying TV and videos. There is even more tolerance for buying alcoholic beverages from local Christians who have long been allowed to sell this stuff because their religion does not forbid it (and their worship services actually use wine). Also unpopular is the ISIL attitude that anything they do is above reproach. The Sunni tribes that ISIL expected to be allies and take care of administering the newly conquered territories have increasingly refused to go along. While the Sunni tribes like the measure of law and order ISIL has imposed they are not willing to accept all the other features of ISIL rule. The secular Sunnis (mainly the surviving Baath Party organizations) initially believed they could work with ISIL but have since turned against the strict forms of Islam ISIL insists on. Meanwhile ISIL has antagonized many Islamic conservative groups by destroying shrines and even mosques ISIL considers heretical despite the fact that most Sunni Arabs tolerate these places because they are very popular, and bring in a significant amount of tourist business from foreigners and religious pilgrims.

Go here to read the rest.  ISIS was never going to be able to hold onto their conquests, especially with their charming habit of committing atrocities against all and sundry and inflaming all non-ISIS groups against them.  It will be interesting to see what comes after in Iraq when the ISIS terrorists decide that skeddadling back to their holes in Syria is the better part of such minute valor as they possess.  Stay tuned.

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bill bannon
bill bannon
Tuesday, August 19, AD 2014 7:37am

Pope Francis on his plane trip home seems to be against bombing and war but does want ISIL stopped…I fear he is reading the wonderful Catholics at the pacifist websites who seemed to have grown up in very protected situations…here is Francis answering on the plane home from Korea:

“In these cases where there is unjust aggression, I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor. I underscore the verb ‘stop’; I don’t say bomb, make war — stop him. The means by which he may be stopped should be evaluated. To stop the unjust aggressor is licit, but we nevertheless need to remember how many times, using this excuse of stopping an unjust aggressor, the powerful nations have dominated other peoples, made a real war of conquest. A single nation cannot judge how to stop this, how to stop an unjust aggressor. After the Second World War, there arose the idea of the United Nations. That is where we should discuss: ‘Is there an unjust aggressor? It seems there is. How do we stop him?’ But only that, nothing more.”

Words fail me. Apparently we can’t use air force bombs but must drop air borne rangers who will sing ” Stop In The Name of Love…before you break my heart…think it ooover”… to men who behead six year old girls and we must do this after the UN evaluates…Is there an unjust aggressor? Does his Holiness have a tv?

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, August 19, AD 2014 8:23am

“…the powerful nations have dominated other peoples, made a real war of conquest.” Pope Francis slanders the United States of America. The U.S.A. has taken only the land needed to bury her dead warriors for freedom. The United Nations, on the other hand, does not acknowedge “their Creator” from the Declaration of Independence and will surely make beasts of burden of the less powerful nations. Only the U. S. has stopped the United Nations from absorbing other smaller nations, as it pursues all mineral rights under the sea and an international court. The U.N has plans to tax American citizens to pay for a standing army and all without God. The victory of atheism. And this is what Pope Francis calls for? Pope Francis needs to buy a tv.
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P.S. Planned Parenthood has infiltrated the United Nations and uses the U.N. to indoctrinate American Children in public school that abortion is their natural right, and all with tax dollars. If Pope Francis is unaware of this, then he really needs to buy a tv.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Tuesday, August 19, AD 2014 9:12am

Mary,
We pay 25% of the UN budget though we are 4% of the earth’s population.
The UN which Pope Benedict said needed more teeth in section 67 of “Caritas in Veritate” has blasted Ireland and other countries for banning abortion a month ago…so Popes are not thinking when they wish it teeth:

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/07/15/UN-Committee-Says-Irish-Constitution-Violates-International-Law

bill bannon
bill bannon
Tuesday, August 19, AD 2014 5:28pm

Pat,
Hyperbole is big over there. Gaza’s Hamas just before the last fighting warned Israel, ” We will bring the gates of hell against you.” That became the worst prediction of the decade. But ISIS will get here but I suspect, being users of media, it will be the same old, same old flashy targets…Manhattan, DC, and Boston and I’m in the NY harbor perimeter so it does make me wonder about dirty bombs which they could well afford. There are stirrings in the Congress about ISIS being more than about Iraq and that we should be fighting then as wherever they are…as we had sought Al Qaeda. Their two greatest sources of income are oil fields in Syria and Iraq. We should begin there with cruise missiles programmed for all equipment at the sites.
If we don’t do it now, we will do it in reaction to their first act here. I suspect this aim of Obama’s will broaden with Congressional urging.

Don the Kiwi
Don the Kiwi
Tuesday, August 19, AD 2014 6:56pm

The huge shame and sadness of this is, that if O’Bumbler had responded to Maliki’s request six months ago, the ISIL and the carnage they have brought to the region would not exist – USAF and attack drones could have eliminated ISIL at the Syrian border.
Obama has blood on his hands, through refusing to act on the request of an ally. The US still has a major reponsibilty to Iraq, but Obama would not act because he didn’t like the way Maliki was running the country – political considerations outweigh humanitarian ones to this totally inept president.
If anyone had doubts about this guy’s competence previously, there can be no doubt now – its there for the world to see – except perhaps for his sychophants who are his bootlickers.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Tuesday, August 19, AD 2014 10:37pm

if a particular manifestation wanes, it seems the monster grows another head or takes a different form > PLO or al qaeda or HAMAS or ISIS

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, August 20, AD 2014 2:57am

Don the Kiwi wrote, “Obama would not act because he didn’t like the way Maliki was running the country…”
Why would anyone want to shore up the pro-Shia, pro-Iranian government of Nouri al-Maliki? The real enemy in the region is Iran, for only Iran, with its nuclear programme, can threaten the existence of Israel. Iraq, destabilised and divided can only be a good thing.
For the same reason, if Syria is turned from an Iranian ally (with strong armed forces and artillery positions on the Golan Heights) into a battle-ground for rival militias, that, too, increases Israel’s security, especially as Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, will no longer be able to operate freely there.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Wednesday, August 20, AD 2014 7:44am

The point remains Michael, earlier action could have saved people from some if this. Not because anybody esteemed Maliki.
. You just can’t have a fixed template that you won’t digress from when fighting these evil forces. We can’t even call them an “axis” they are Disordered and Chaotic. When one is killing snakes one must be flexible and fast.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, August 20, AD 2014 10:39am

Maliki was our guy until Obama decided he wasn’t. The US still has troops in Germany, Japan, and Korea. There is an American military presence in Djibouti, E. Africa. Why didn’t we keep similar bases in Iraq?

What is the body count of us run up by Iran and the Shia?

Almost all the world’s terrorsists are Arabs and/or Sunni.

But, MPS is correct.

Obama aided and abeted the mass-murderers and now they’re killing Christians, and undoing what thousands of GI’s died to achieve. Collateral damage. They were expendable. Those losses cannot be considered severe. You needs to break some eggs to make an omelet. And, that’s what the zero and Hillary have done: made more of a bloody mess of the ME.

The only guy that’s happy about all this is Jimmy Carter. He’s no longer the worst Prez in history.

If Hillary and her enablers can convince the sheeple that she was never Secy of State . . .

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, August 20, AD 2014 11:31am

bill bannon: One stipulation of becoming a citizen for the illegal alien is to serve two years in the military, not by choice, but by draft.
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Eradicating human existence cannot be a human right. Equal Justice requires that my freedom ends where your freedom begins. Human existence is the criterion for the objective ordering of human rights. The human being acknowledges God by being a human being.
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It goes without saying that the human being denies God by becoming a liar and a murderer.
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It is being whispered about in the eastern European nations that Pope Francis is a communist. Who else would know better than those oppressed by communism?

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, August 20, AD 2014 1:26pm

T Shaw wrote, “Almost all the world’s terrorsists are Arabs and/or Sunni.”

Hezbollah is a Shiite organisation and a state proxy of Iran, a country about 60% Persian and 25% Azeri. Only about 2% of the population is Arab. We seem to have forgotten the 15-year civil war in Lebanon.

c matt
c matt
Wednesday, August 20, AD 2014 2:07pm

One stipulation of becoming a citizen for the illegal alien is to serve two years in the military, not by choice, but by draft.

Is that really such a good idea – a drafted foreign force? How well did that eventually work out for the Romans?

As for ISIS, ebb and flow is the MO of these types of groups – a flash of victories, then receding, but never quite disappearing, only morphing into something else. Conquest through a thousand cuts. They are like weeds- need to be destroyed to the root or they come back, and even then it requires constant vigilance.

Barbara Gordon
Barbara Gordon
Thursday, August 21, AD 2014 9:39pm

MDV said: “One stipulation of becoming a citizen for the illegal alien is to serve two years in the military, not by choice, but by draft.”

Spoke with a National Guard recruiter at the high school where I teach 2 days ago. He said that 6 weeks into their National Guard basic training that recruits who do not have American citizenship are sworn in as US citizens. So the process can be expedited much quicker than 2 years.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, August 22, AD 2014 2:51am

Barbara Gordon

In France, aliens may apply for naturalisation after three years military service. However, this period is waived for those wounded in action – « Français par le sang verse » [French by the shedding of blood], as is the usual one year’s delay between the application for and granting of citizenship.

For many years, universal suffrage and universal conscription were seen as two sides of the same coin and men were only eligible to vote or hold office after completion of their military service. Under the ancien regime, the three “estates” of the realm were the nobility, the clergy and the Third Estate – those who fought, those who prayed and those who paid taxes and the sword was the badge of the gentleman. It was the Revolution that ushered in the principle that no one should be denied the right, nor be relieved of the responsibility of defending the nation under arms.

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