BACK INTO THE WILD-BLUE YONDER
(…coming full circle to where we were…before)

The President has ordered an open-ended air-strike campaign against the rampaging forces of ISIS in Iraq, because these are now attempting to attack the Kurds there. It seems like déjà vu…as we head back into the wild-blue yonder…coming full circle to where we were… before.

Twenty odd years ago we did the same thing during Saddam Hussein’s campaign to bomb, shell, and gas the Kurds into submission. So they fled en masse up into their mountains for refuge, only to find themselves marooned on those freezing slopes with little food or shelter, yet still subject to Saddam’s murderous assaults. Eventually, the rest of the world got off its rear ends, organizing massive humanitarian aid for them, and America, as an extension of its post-Gulf War policing functions in the area, imposed a no-fly buffer zone to protect them from any continuing assaults by Saddam. That buffer was maintained for almost ten years, until we ultimately charged back into Iraq with boots on the ground…to permanently eliminate Saddam.

Thus, sheltered by that air cover, the Kurds reorganized themselves into a well-ordered civil society with a strong economic and political structure, and of course, an armed, well trained, and disciplined, military force…its Peshmerga. In the following decade of America’s presence in Iraq, it was the only part of it in all that time that never had any car bombings, IED’s, or other “insurgent” activity of any kind. For all practical purposes they had established a viable autonomous, if not independent, Kurdistan, worthy of respect.

Unfortunately, America was so fixated on being a nation-building artiste in a vain attempt to meld together a new “democratic” central authority for Iraq it largely ignored the Kurds, focusing all its efforts entirely on that purpose instead. These were wasted efforts in terms of time, lost American lives, and squandered treasure, all of that resulting with the dysfunctional outcome we have in Iraq today.

So, here we are, back to square one. Granted, the Kurds are no longer the helpless bunch they were back then, and still the only part of Iraq worth any kind of help and assistance, but the ISIS mob is causing a flood of refugees to flow in upon them, and there’s a limit to what the Kurds can do on their own with the meager weaponry they have. Nevertheless, now that it is more in our own interest this time than before…we’re giving them another round of air-cover, and arms, to reinforce their capacity to resist against ISIS.

At least, unlike the Iraqi Army (upon which we spent so much time and money to “train” all those years), none of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces will ever run away from confronting it. These will stand and fight because they have something worthwhile to fight for (which may explain the poor performance of the Iraqi military who don’t… given the dysfunctional government they have in Baghdad).

Meanwhile, what is ISIS, and why is it such a threat?

Simply put, it seems to be the brain child of a wanna-be warlord named- al Baghdadi – who, by taking advantage of the chaos in the civil war raging in neighboring Syria, began putting together what can only be called an organized criminal enterprise using murder, intimidation, and pillage, to build up its power, all of it camouflaged under a black banner of Islamist jihad (an appropriate reflection of its piratical nature) pitting Sunni against Shia, and anyone else who might get in its way.

Step by stealthy step the ISIS enterprise thus evolved, almost entirely overlooked by the world at large, until it burst out of the Syrian chaos to take advantage of Iraq’s apparent disintegration as a viable sovereign state, hoping to ultimately revive a medieval Islamic Caliphate in the territory it has been carving out of both Syria and Iraq, using the same kind of barbarous terror tactics that would have made Genghis Khan proud. It has now become the jihadi equivalent of the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa…just as infectious and perhaps even deadlier.

If there is any criticism to be made about using our air strike capabilities to help contain and diminish its viral potentials, one might only fault the President for not making it a much earlier, broader, and stronger effort, not just to blunt its frontline forces in Iraq, but to concurrently go after all its bases and strongholds in Syria as well, and declaring “open season” targeting wherever any of its black banners may be found.

As usual, those who protest against such action apparently don’t understand that the Joan Rivers approach (can we talk?) is neither appropriate nor effective when confronting the rabidity of such a mob as…ISIS.

CENTURION