Oh, for fuck’s sake

For the moment, ignore that we went to war in Iraq in 2003 on the excuse that Saddam Hussein had WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) fully expecting that US troops would be greeted as liberators, to be showered with flowers and candy. For the moment, forget that the Iraq we had invaded almost disintegrated into a Sunni/Shi’ite civil war, with the northern Kurds standing on the sidelines, until the US military surge in 2007 temporarily shored up the situation on the ground, leaving all the old ethnic/religious tensions firmly in place. For the moment, pretend that neo-conservative predictions that the US/Iraq war would produce liberty and democracy not just in that country but throughout the region weren’t entirely idiotic.

Let’s consider just one set of factors of this fucked-up mess that the US left when America officially ended military operations in Iraq in 2011 and withdrew US troops.

Here are several maps charting the ethnic/religious divisions in Iraq:
<

When the US declared “mission accomplished” for a second time in 2011, the majority Shi’ite government held power in Baghdad with the minority Sunni population bridling under this arrangement, and the Kurds enjoying relative autonomy in the north. Enter ISIS, the radical Sunni movement for an Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. This al-Qaeda affiliate is more popular, more determined, more uncompromising and more violent than al-Qaeda itself, intent upon establishing a sharia-governed Islamic Caliphate from Lebanon through Iraq. Here are maps charting the activity of ISIS through 2014:

Here are maps indicating the general territory currently controlled by the ISIS as of June 2014:

And here is a map representing the Islamic Caliphate that is the ultimate goal of ISIS:

Let me restate matters. In 2011, when the US declared victory in Iraq, ceased military operations and withdrew its troops, the nation of Iraq was nominally a democracy under Shi’ite control and heavily influenced by Iran, with al-Qaeda decimated, on the run, and its leader Osama bin-Ladin dead. Now, in 2014, ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, is fully resurgent and militarily on the move while Iraq totters on the brink of complete collapse. Hell, the whole region remains profoundly unstable, teetering on the brink of total social chaos and bloody violence. Forget Left or Right. Anybody up for some serious war crimes trials?

Here’s the BBC’s ongoing coverage of the STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ.

[A WORD ON THE MAPS: Treat each series of multiple maps as a slide show, and try to build up a multi-layered, close to 3D image of the situation they separately are two-dimensionally attempting to portray. Merge the information the maps have in common, and accumulate the unique information each map provides.]

I call bullshit!

The Beltway budget melodrama rolls on to its predictable and dreary end, with both sides now split over increasingly small differences. None of this is worth a partial government shutdown, much less the risk of a debt default, and both sides are looking like losers. Let’s get it over with.

“The Debt Denouement,” Wall Street Journal, 10-15-13

BULLSHIT!

I call mutherfucking bullshit!

This isn’t a matter of “everybody’s at fault here, let’s dole the blame out equally and move on.” One side, and one particularly tiny faction of one minority party is disproportionately at fault here. The fucking Tea Party loonies of the loser Republican Party, which capitulated to them, is to blame here. I’m no fan of the sad sack Democratic Party, which has its fair share of nutjobs. But the idiocy here cannot be evenly apportioned.

My wife watches the fictional TV drama “Hostages.” It’s a show about a shadowy cadre of heavily armed quasi-government spooks who attempt to force a famous surgeon to assassinate the president of the United States by proxy by taking her and her whole family hostage. Well, it turns out that the son is dealing pot, the daughter is having sex with a “bad boy” boyfriend, the husband is having an affair, yada, yada, yada. Everybody in the family has their dirty little secrets, and they’re all morally culpable to a degree. But they’re being held hostage, damnit! There’s no equivalency between the sordid lives of the family members who are being held hostage, and their thuggish, murderous hostage takers!

I’m making a no-holds-barred analogy to US politics here and now.

WANTED FOR CRIMINAL ACTIVITY: HOSTAGE TAKERS!

Who’s watching the watchers?

 

FBI surveillance activities, CIA spying and drone programs, NSA PRISM and XKEYSCORE programs. And that’s just the stuff we know about. Since 9/11, state surveillance has been ramped up, to the point where even dyed-in-the-wool national security apologists are worried that we might be a tad closer to a police state.

Old school Republicans and Democrats believe that if the government wants to listen in on their phone calls, or read their emails, in order to keep their asses from being blown off, fine by them. The state doesn’t care if they’re cheating on their spouse or sharing juicy gossip about their neighbors. They just want to be secure. The Left, and self-styled libertarians, are freaked out that, with each revelation and leak, we’re one step closer to losing our freedoms, and one step closer to fascism, or communism, depending on your ideological bent. They’re fond of quoting Benjamin Franklin who said: “Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security.”

A halfway decent, ongoing PBS program covering many of these issues is Frontline’s Top Secret America.