Day: October 17, 2016

Iraq: And So It Begins

The war in Iraq has not been in the headlines later even though about a 100 people a day die….the media rather play on an endless loop the gossip coming out of both sides of the election…..mind numbing bullshit!

The breaking news is that after months of promising that the final push for Mosul would take place…..it actually began this morning….

Iraqi Prime Minister Hayder Abadi has announced the beginning of the nation’s invasion of the city of Mosul today, the largest city held by ISIS, which ISIS forces have held for over two years. The invasion had been expected for some time, and Abadi had indicated the announcement was imminent just two days prior.

Iraqi planes have been dropping leaflets on the city over the past few days as well, advising locals the invasion was to begin soon, and telling them to remain in doors. The early offensive appears to be centered around US shelling of the city.

The battle includes many diverse factions in the fight against ISIS….and that could be a bad thing…..depending on how the battle fairs……

Source: What is the battle for Mosul?Everything you need to know about the fight to liberate Isil’s last bastion of power in Iraq

These diverse groups could quickly create problems in the invasion, as the Shi’ite militias were hugely problematic in previous invasions of Sunni cities, and the Peshmerga has been annexing most of the territory its gained recently, leading Abadi to warn that the Mosul border cannot be changed by this battle.

Also looming over the invasion is the question of Turkish military forces nearby, as the Turkish government has insisted it will play a role in the invasion, but has been warned against involvement by the Iraqi military, who says they aren’t welcome in Iraq to begin with.

Many are predicting that ISIS will be defeated in Mosul and they will fall back to Raqaa in Syria….possibly for their last stand…..

Along those lines I read a post that touches on the possibility…..

Last Friday, while most of the US media was myopically focused on the collapse of Donald “Genitalia-Grabbing” Trump’s campaign, there was, in fact, other news happening. With all the current talk about fights for survival and battleground states, it’s easy to forget that a very genuine war is being fought.

And what happens in the battle for the capital of the Islamic State may have a profound effect on what happens next month in the US elections.

ISIS’ Armageddon in Dabiq

At the end of last week, the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters scored a major and perhaps a decisive victory against the terrorist organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, otherwise known as ISIL or Daesh: the liberation of the strongholds of Dabiq and Soran. 

Source: Could We Soon Be Witnessing the Fall of ISIL? | Nomadic Politics

I realize that the accusations and gossip flowing from the mouths of idiots is far more important than this bit of news…..but you might want to keep an eye on this situation…..why?  There are so many diverse directions it could go and so many results that it bears attention.  Plus 5000+ US soldiers are in country……how will they fair?

Is There An Anti-Trump Media Conspiracy?

I good friend of IST and a supporter of Trump has been writing for awhile about the possibility of the election may be “stolen” from Trump.  He also has been saying that the Lamestream Media, as he calls it, has a decidedly anti-Trump bias….I can see where he could think that, after all he is a Trump supporter and his candidate has had a couple of really shitty weeks…..beyond that I can see where that sort of thinking can come from……

Right now his problems are all “he said, she said”…..and I have a problem with that no matter which side is uttering it.

I also read The American Conservative (is anyone shocked?)….and a recent article in the magazine has asked this very question……

Mollie Hemingway is no fan of Donald Trump. She says he deserves the public roasting that he’s getting for his lecherous behavior. But she finds it more than a little suspicious that despite Trump’s known reputation as an alpha male sexual aggressor, the news media didn’t manage to turn up any of this stuff until right here in the final weeks of the election.

Source: Is There An Anti-Trump Media Conspiracy? | The American Conservative

Regardless of your opinion of the candidate….do you think that the media has an anti-Trump bias?

The Man Who Could Be President

And NO!  This is not a post about Trump and his outside chance of becoming the president of the United States……something even more creepy.

As the election creeps up there are always some interesting stories that need to be read……

Surprise quiz!

Ever hear of Evan McMullin?

NO?

He is an independent candidate for president from the great state of Utah.

Why is his name coming up?

It may sound nuts, but an analysis at FiveThirtyEight lays out the longshot scenario of how the nation’s next president could be … Evan McMullin. As Benjamin Morris writes, the chances of the independent candidate claiming the White House “are slim, not none.” And it’s all about Utah: A traditional Mormon conservative, McMullin has positioned himself as an alternative to Trump—and that may be a winning strategy in his home state, where Trump has acknowledged a “tremendous problem” rallying support, per the Deseret News. If McMullin snatches Utah’s six electoral votes, he could prevent any candidate from collecting the 270 electoral votes required to win. In that situation, the election would be decided in Congress, opening up the chance for McMullin.

With many House Republicans turning their back on Trump of late, it’s possible they’d choose McMullin over the man atop their party’s ticket. (Morris lays out in detail the convoluted process in the House and Senate that could conceivably put him over the top.) You’d be forgiven for not recognizing the name—only 52% of Utahans know who McMullin is, based on a recent state poll. (The former CIA officer’s bio is here.) Still, McMullin was polling at 22% in the state—ahead of Gary Johnson and trailing the deadlocked Clinton and Trump by just four percentage points. With residents in what one BYU professor describes as a “full-scale revolt” against Trump, there’s a real possibility McMullin can take the state, especially if he secures Mitt Romney’s endorsement. Read the full analysis here.

I know…this is a long shot….but still fun to contemplate…..but win the election?

…….(Smiles and exits stage right)……..

The Obama Legacy

I have said all along that foreign policy would be the most important issue in 2016…..the problem is NO one of the candidates wants to talk about the issue seriously….instead we get platitudes, catch phrases and applause lines…..none of which really illustrates their knowledge of international situations.

Back in 2008 Obama was awarded the Nobel peace Prize because of his rhetoric…he had NOTHING as far as deeds but he talked a good game…..I said then that it was nothing but a PR stunt and that the commission would regret the awarding of the prize…..

And then everyone starting noticing that it was ignorant to award it to Obama…..

In his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama was, if not particularly ideologically committed, quickly branded as the comparatively antiwar candidate. It wasn’t a hard case to make, with Sen. John McCain (R – AZ) running an intensely pro-war campaign.

But Obama’s dubious antiwar bonafides were quickly embraced internationally, where he was heralded as a peacemaker of historical proportions and, in 2009, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just nine months into his first term in office. He hadn’t really done anything yet, and the prize was seen as an advanced award for the things he was expected to do.

Source: Despite Nobel Peace Prize, Obama’s Presidency Defined by Constant War — News from Antiwar.com

Meanwhile back to the election of 2016……

……..presidential debate is unlikely to have much substance. It’s nothing new—throughout the presidential election season, concerns over personality and character have trumped even the pretense of a focus on actual issues. Donald Trump’s tenuous relationship with the truth makes this a particularly acute post-truth election but it isn’t the first one. Neither is it the first post-issues election.

When it comes to foreign policy, it has been decades since there’s been any kind of substantive domestic electoral debate. In the 2008 presidential election cycle, then Senator-Barack Obama got a lot of mileage out of his opposition to the Iraq War, when he was a state senator representing Hyde Park, one of the most liberal constituencies in Chicago. His primary opponent, then-Senator Hillary Clinton had not only voted for the 2002 authorization of the use of military force in Iraq but had also become one of its most vocal proponents, helping to forge a now conveniently forgotten bipartisan consensus.

Source: Trump, Clinton Foreign Policy Nonsense a Reflection of the Obama Legacy – Hit & Run : Reason.com

No matter the winner in November the legacy of Obama will dictate that our foreign policy will change little and that war will be the rule of the day for years to come.

So much for the change we all are looking for…..right?

Return Of The Ottomans?

There is no one left alive that can give much first hand knowledge about the Ottoman Empire…..unless one is a history major or buff.  It has been about 93 years since the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

The Ottoman Empire was an imperial state that was founded in 1299 after growing out of the break-down of several Turkish tribes. The empire then grew to include many areas in what is now present-day Europe to and it eventually became one of the largest, most powerful and longest-lasting empires in the history of the world. At its peak, the Ottoman Empire included the areas of Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Hungary, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and parts of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa.

In the 1700s the Ottoman Empire began to rapidly deteriorate following the Russo-Turkish Wars and a series of treaties during that time caused the empire to lose some of its economic independence. The Crimean War, which lasted from 1853-1856, further exhausted the struggling empire. In 1856 the independence of the Ottoman Empire was recognized by the Congress of Paris but it was still losing its strength as a European power.

In the late 1800s, there were several rebellions and the Ottoman Empire continued to lose territory and political and social instability in the 1890s created international negativity toward the empire. The Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and uprisings by Turkish nationalists further reduced the empire’s territory and increased instability. Following the end of World War One, the Ottoman Empire officially came to an end with the Treaty of Sevres.

I bring up this simplistic history about Turkey because of the situation today in the Middle East.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan called last year for the “conquest” of Europe by Islam “through emigration” into Europe and announced that the “conquest is to have the courage, tenacity, and sagacity to defy the entire world even at the hardest times.”

The speech, delivered in Istanbul on May 30, 2015, at a public meeting celebrating the 562nd anniversary of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire’s Muslim armies, has just been translated into English for the first time.

Source: Erdogan and the Return of the Ottoman Empire – The New Observer

Turkey’s interest in northern Syria and northern Iraq is not an abstraction triggered by a group of religious fanatics calling themselves the Islamic State; it is the bypass, intersection and reinforcement of multiple geopolitical wavelengths creating an invisible force behind Ankara to re-extend Turkey’s formal and informal boundaries beyond Anatolia.

They, Turkey, has already started making in roads in the empire business…..they have ground troops in Syria and Iraq and they have little intention of leaving…..

Turkey insisted on Thursday that its troops will remain in Iraq despite Baghdad’s growing anger ahead of a planned operation to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS.

Baghdad has accused Ankara of risking a regional war by keeping its forces inside Iraq, with the dispute complicating plans for the ambitious American-backed Mosul operation.

“No matter what the Iraqi government in Baghdad says, a Turkish presence will remain there to fight against Daesh (ISIS), and to avoid any forceful change of the demographic composition in the region,” Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in televised comments.

Turkey has an estimated 2,000 troops in Iraq — around 500 of them in the Bashiqa camp in northern Iraq training Iraqi fighters who hope to participate in the battle to recapture Mosul, according to Turkish media.

The Turkish parliament on Saturday extended a government mandate by one year, allowing its troops to remain on both Iraqi and Syrian soil.

The Iraqi parliament labelled the Turkish troops an “occupying force” while Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi raised fears that Turkey’s move could lead to “regional war”.

Turkey is fighting the Kurds in Syria and some factions that it does not like…..ground troops are there to stay also…..

Since the supposed coup, Erdogan has been consolidating his power base….the Ottomans are making a slow return…….a new sultan in the making.

Just a thought……