Menage a Trois

--Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
ISIS leader

 Everything becomes and recurs eternally - escape is impossible!

Supposing we could judge value, what follows?
The idea of recurrence as a selective principle,
in the service of strength (and barbarism!!)
--F. Nietzche

(T)he power to cause pain is the only power that matters,
the power to kill and destroy,
because if you can't kill then you are always subject
to those who can, and nothing and no one
will ever save you 
--Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card 

Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw?
Well, what tongue does the wind talk?
 What nationality is a storm?
What country do rains come from?
What color is lightning?
Where does thunder go when it dies?” 

 *   *   * 

You can't act if you don't know.
Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.
 --Something Wicked This Way Comes, 
Ray Bradbury 
____________________

President Barack Obama is expected to ask Congress tonight to authorize $500 billion to bolster the moderate militants fighting the Syrian government. These supposed moderates will then be used to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). At least that's the plan. 

But how does one gauge "moderation" in a civil war? Beyond the difficulty of deciding who to support, for the first time in United State's history, the nation is proposing a strategy based upon opposing both sides in a war.

For some reason, the U.S. is dedicated to the destruction of the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, while also opposing his major opponent, ISIS. This strategy ignores what happened the last three times the U.S. deposed dictators. The supposed unholy trinity of Libya, Iraq and Egypt are examples of this folly. Realpolitik would suggest the U.S. is better dealing with the devils it knows rather than those it does not. 

Why is the U.S. opposed to Syria, anyway? What threat originates there that would endanger the U.S. homeland? While ISIS is a dangerous organization, what proof exists beyond emotion and hyperbole that this group is a danger to the U.S.? 

The proposed new strategy lacks a clear objective (beyond smashing people and things from the sky), violating the Principles of War in a big way. The destruction of a government or a group is not a strategy, but at best, Phase #1 of a strategy. 

The key point is: what is the purpose and objective to destroying Syria and ISIS? The U.S. strategy lacks a definable end game.

Meanwhile, a half gallon of milk has risen 20% in one week here in Florida. People are now audibly questioning the steep jack in their grocery bill. Most often heard: "Maybe they don't want us to eat."
But they will manage to find money for flyboys to kill more Arabs; hopefully, they will kill the right ones. But there is the rub -- WHO are the right ones, and by whose metric?

Ranger is more consumed with food prices in his hometown than with the mistaken notion of stopping violence and hatred on the far side of the moon.  

Somewhere, General David Petraeus is asking with a wry smile, "So tell me: How does this end?"

June's Bustin' Out All Over

It was from us they learnt the secret of life:
that we grow old without growing wise 
--A Murder of Quality, John le Carre

I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize
--Steven Wright  

When you told me 
You didn't need me anymore 
Well you know I nearly broke down and cried 
--Oh! Darling, The Beatles 
______________

 

Subtitles: Deadneck Hootenanny; Sisyphus; House of Cards

Iraq, such it was, is disintegrating. Goodbye U.S.A.; don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Absolutely NO surprises here, no siree, Bob. Take a cauldron of seething generational hatreds (Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds), throw in hundreds of Billions of United States greenbacks and strong soldiers and materiel on a jihad-to-overthrow-a-jihad, a little apocalyptic fervor, overthrow the country's Head Honcho (the late Mr. Hussein) who was keeping a lid on the boil and -- Bob's your uncle -- June, 2014 Iraq.

It's a not-proud day for American war hawks everywhere. Just like after the fall of Saigon in the Vietnam debacle (1975), the words are already forming: "We should have stayed there longer!" "We could have headed this off at the pass." But the truth is, should we have done that we would have merely hemorrhaged more precious tax dollars and lives for the arrogant privilege of staving off the inevitable Iraq civil war for another -- five years? Ten?

It's not our job, man (like Chico said.) Not our job to prop up our straw men, like Nouri al-Maliki. Not our job to train up security forces who drop trou at a moment's notice. Not our job to "spread democracy" at the tip of a gun, because it can't be done.

Building an Army and a police force does not = building a society.

In a sad attempt to snatch some failure from the jaws of defeat, CBS news reported last night that the Iraq government has "lost all the advantages and victories and progress that our soldiers bought with their lives." What piffle.

The PWOT has been an example of faulty logic and monumental stupidity and ego posing as strategic national policy from the start. It is cold comfort to re-state the obvious: the Iraqi Army is throwing down their arms and uniforms and melting into the woodwork like the cockroaches we constantly opined they were.

The building of the Iraqi Army and Police was an act of folly not founded in any historical reality.

We were going to link to some humdinger pieces we had written, but why? The raison d'etre of RangerAgainstWar has been to oppose the Phony War on Terror (PWOT©) since its inception. We have never wavered (unlike former Secretary of State Clinton who said on NPR's "Fresh Air" today that she just didn't know it was wrong at the time; she's "learned". ) Type in any relevant identifiers and you will get back tons of insight here on RAW as to why this pathetic expedition was doomed to failure.

The big cities have fallen (Mosul, Fallujah and Ramadi) to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) -- the the bigger and better al Qaeda, constituted of battle-hardened pros mentored by generations of occupiers. Kirkuk has just been taken by the Kurds, perhaps the most reasoned members of the Iraqi cock-up. They have wisely been sitting on their haunches, licking their talons and waiting to join the fray to claim for their piece of the pie in the North.

Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul, openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq's second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting.

Senior government officials in Baghdad were equally shocked, accusing the army of betrayal and claiming the sacking of the city was a strategic disaster that would imperil Iraq's borders.

The developments seriously undermine US claims to have established a unified and competent military after more than a decade of training. The US invasion and occupation cost Washington close to a trillion dollars and the lives of more than 4,500 of its soldiers. It is also thought to have killed at least 100,000 Iraqis. (Iraq Army capitulates to ISIS militants in four cities)

Hang it up, America. We are the designated losers in this misguided war. We cannot via force of arms change the flow of history or reality.

We told you so. It's cold comfort.

--Jim & Lisa

Running Down a Dream

If I listened long enough to you
I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true
--Reason to Believe, Tim Harden
__________________

Faisal Shahzad, the New York Times Square bombing ace (not) was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for being a total failure as a Jihadist bomber (Times Square bomber sentenced, warns of more Attacks.)

His scare comments are not worthy of comment ("Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me the first droplet of the blood that will follow"), for if he is the first impotent droplet of blood, we haven't much to fear. His training and operation skills were in the minus figures, and he is a joke, were anyone in the laughing mood.

However, it is U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum's comments that deserve censure.

Cederbaum gave a Judge Judy performance, saying "I do hope you will spend some of the time in prison thinking carefully about whether the Quran wants you to kill lots of people." Her directive was totally inappropriate in a legal setting.

Cederbaum's moral directive plays right into the Jihadist propagandists. Shahzad was not on trial for a faulty interpretation of the Koran, but rather for attempting to set off a bomb in Times Square -- a criminal act. The judge's comment is straight from the Hollywood playbook, and confirms to the world that the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) and the US Judicial system is engaged in religious warfare and persecution of Islamist beliefs.

Cederbaum's statement shoved Judeo-Christian values down the defendant's throat and it will come back to haunt us somewhere down the line. It was unnecessary inflammatory rhetoric. The US judicial system works quite well sans the intrusion of religious edicts. We fail when we forget our most basic tenets.

The real war is over nothing less than the survival of our precious democratic values. When we lose those, THEY have won.


. . . to be continued