If I find the time, I will finish and publish a more developed piece on America’s stance toward the Islamic State, partly in response to a post on by Adam Elkus and Nick Prime that, in the process of proposing…
#Iraq
IS/ISIS/ISIL/QSIS/Daesh-related links 2014.8.20-9
…plus a few observations as tweeted. I’m sure I missed a few good pieces (possibly while I was busy yesterday, for instance). Please feel free to link anything interesting or useful in the comments.
Posted in International Relations, Neo-Imperialism, Twitterei, War Tagged with: Daesh, Iraq, ISIL, ISIS, neo-imperialism, QSIS, Syria
Global Fight Club
What exists now is domestic & international momentum to finally address the larger Syrian conflict, and not just the limited problem of ISIL — Zeddonymous (@ZeddRebel) August 27, 2014 The Caliphate is an image or idea, expressed in a dogmatic…
Essential Threat
In light of the ritualized sacrifice of a single man, on the altar of what we cannot help but believe – no possible justification – the many may be revealed to us as allies, as “with us,” perhaps first symbolically, but now also practically. Put simply, Foley’s death marks if it does not itself restore American re-engagement on behalf of those we had all but abandoned in the region.
Posted in Featured, Neo-Imperialism, The Exception, War Tagged with: Daesh, Iraq, Islamic State, Syria
In the future everybody will be right about Iraq for fifteen minutes
What other than the actual invasion of Iraq under proven-false premises could actually prove those premises false, at least as we articulated them to ourselves while, we believed, safely ignoring the always-wrong and resoundingly re-defeated defeatists?
Posted in Featured, History, Neo-Imperialism, notes, War Tagged with: Iraq, Iraq War, Operation Iraqi Freedom
Controlled Demolition, not Flypaper (Ten Years After Cont’d) – UPDATED
We do not have an in fact unresolved history of war with Syria or Assad as we did with Iraq/Saddam, and we operate from greater confidence in regard to terrorist threats than in the early 2000s. If this confidence is misplaced, it is something that will have to be proved to us before we embark upon some new improved version of a newly vindicated Bush Doctrine.
Ignorance Be Not Proud (10 Years After, Cont’d)
The difference here is, I believe, in strategic concepts – possibly even a different implicit understanding of what the U.S. and therefore its interests even are or should be.
Responsibility to Project (10 Years After #3)
If the implacable self-deception of that moment ten years ago produced a shallowly mistaken, embarrassingly unjustifiable, finally tragic assertion of a global regency and its prerogatives, the commensurate and necessary deception of this moment might be of a safe, simply chosen abdication.
The Iraq War “Imminence Debate” in Retrospect
Getting caught up on the terms of the discussion can be misleading when the whole point of the new initiative is that the terms of the old discussion are no longer adequate. That people fall into the old terminology constantly should not be surprising, but the fact that they do is relevant to the main questions only as evidence of their very novelty, and illustration of how difficult it can be to discuss and cope with them at all.