The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    The Long March To War

    By Michael Maiello on Tue, 08/12/2014 - 10:10am | Politics

    I'm finding the current foreign policy narrative, as pushed by those who identify as liberal hawks, very disturbing.  The Obama administration is certainly not rushing to use U.S. ground forces but this is where drone strikes and aerial bombardment inevitably leads.  Our military interventions start with the low risk choices and then, as things progress, we start to hear about the "limits of air power," and "the limits of technology."  Before you know it, you're back to fighting an old fashioned war, the one human activity with, apparently, no limits.

    Obama has done a good job of "not doing stupid things," but is now under fire from Hillary Clinton who told The Atlantic that not making mistakes is not enough of an organizing principle for super power foreign policy.  I think that sells Obama a little short -- anyone who thinks he has been ineffective on foreign policy should try to get an interview with bin Laden or Qadafi -- but whatever you think of her criticism or its political purpose, Clinton is a solid interventionist and her foreign policy, if she becomes president, will reflect that. Clinton is a huge believer in the "Responsibility to Protect" and is one of the 90s policy minds who was deeply affected by the U.S. failure to stop the Rwandan genocide. If she thinks a genocide is about to happen on her watch she will attempt to assemble a coalition to stop it.  Failing that, she will act. Pay attention to the use of the word genocide.  Under the Responsibility to Protect is obligates the U.S. to act. As such, presidents and their advisors are cautious with their use of the word.

    Obama has already used the word regarding ISIS and Iraq.  Now we have to hope that the plan he put forward -- limited air strikes to support the Kurdish and Iraqi national forces -- will be sufficient to protect the populations currently threatened by ISIS. If they are not, we have to hope that some other power will commit ground forces.  If they will not and the genocide threat has not dissipated, the U.S. seems obligated to act.

    The other part of the narrative here is that we wouldn't be in this mess if Obama had acted more forcefully in Syria.  Because the American public has never supported sending U.S. soldier there, hawks and interventionists have claimed that the U.S. should have done a better job arming the rebels.  This, they say, would have kept ISIS from becoming powerful.  That seems a stretch.  ISIS are among the rebels.  The first foreign power to bomb ISIS in Iraq was, in fact, Syria. It seems a stretch to me that the right rebels could never have been separated from the wrong ones.

    The specifics of each potential engagement, though, may be less important than where the conversation is moving -- the interventionists were never really chastened by the disaster that was Iraq.  At best, they will tend to claim that it was the right thing to do, had it been handled more effectively.  Some of them, appalled by the results, were at least silent in the years following the invasion.  But, no longer.  They believe it is time to reclaim the moment and their argument "inaction now will require greater, more expensive action later" is easily sellable, if repeated often enough.

    Topics: 
    Politics

    Comments

    Hillary's ludicrous plan to 'fill the Syria vacuum with more weapons' by arming 'the Syrians who demonstrated' was disproved in spades Iraq. Is she an idiot or just playing some political BS game?

    We spent 10 years making and organizing the new Iraq Army. We made sure they had weapons. We trained them in weapon use and in command and control. For years. We fought and died beside them before leaving, and when leaving Pentagon Generals said 'job done'.

    Yet, they ran like jackrabbits when ISIS attacked them. They abandoned their weapons, heavy weapons and armor, including everything in Mosul, the 2nd largest city in Iraq.

    If we had sent sophisticated weapons to Syria, they would now be in use against us and the Kurds.

    One wonders if any of the Prez candidates for 2016 can resist moving us into another disastrous conflict, the GOP seems gung ho for another. I don't see any Dem or GOP candidates out there with the judgment or perspicacity of Obama. Biden may be the best bet, and I would guess he has maybe zero chances to be nominated (corp. media would bash him, not 'exciting' to voters). Who but a corporate/Wall street shill would even want to be Prez, after what Obama has put up with for 8 years?

    Even if nominated and elected Rand Paul, a muddle mouthed weakling, would be easily manipulated by the war profiteers. These remarks by Hillary, and her vote for the 'use of force' in Iraq, are deeply disturbing as to where she would take the country.


    by NCD on Tue, 08/12/2014 - 2:33pm

    Basically, Obama doesn't like to gamble. Since he's gambling with American lives, that's a good thing. He will throw the dice if the odds are right and the stakes are worth it, as in the Bin Laden raid. But he's not going to throw good money after bad when the odds stink.

    There are a bunch of people standing around heckling him, saying that he's chicken for not betting more, yelling at him to put the mortgage money down on red. And when he doesn't win, the nay-sayers always claim that he WOULD have won if he'd only stayed and bought more chips. That's impossible to prove wrong, because it's a fantasy.

    I'm pretty glad he doesn't get us up to our necks in wars that have only tangential national security value,

    Cautious gamblers are good gamblers. And cautious commanders-in-chief are usually good commanders-in-chief too.


    by Doctor Cleveland on Tue, 08/12/2014 - 12:13pm

    I don't think this gambler analogy works well in the context of foreign policy. A wise gambler walks away if the other players are cheats and liars. If we were to do that we'd walk away from nearly all foreign entanglements. (assming we're the honest gambler, a dubious assumption)  Sometimes the stakes are so high that we have to get in the game even if none of the bets are very good. It might be nice if everyone stayed out of the game and let the country in turmoil deal with it internally. But our allies and enemies will get into the game with or without us, leaving us with no leverage to direct the flow of events. Often those who might want to stay out of the game will be drawn in unwillingly, like Turkey or Jordon having to deal with hundreds of thousands of Syrian rfugees.

    The middle east is a game we have to get into, at least as long as we need oil. While Obama's near total non involvement is much better than Bush doing "stupid shit" I do think we need a wiser approach. What I've seen over the last 10 years is not working.


    by ocean-kat on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 1:57pm

    Hillary's approach gave rise to Colin Powell's threatened aneurysm. And ,according to Brad Delong, to the demise of Hillarycare..

    For all of life's problems there's an answer that is simple, direct and understandable. And wrong.

     

     


    by Flavius on Tue, 08/12/2014 - 12:55pm

    I think her statement was a political move to shore up conservadems. The south is full of them that have been voting Republican and they loved the Clintons.  I would not read too much into it. She was a good SOS.  


    by trkingmomoe on Tue, 08/12/2014 - 2:14pm

    I have to disagree.  Firstly, words have consequences, and it is cold comfort to say that her remarks are merely fodder for the rubes.

     

    Furthermore, she actually agitated (if the reports are to be believed and there seems to me no reason not to) for a Syrian policy that, if anything, was as dumb as McCain.

     

    "Arming the rebels" is just a convenient political rubric for pissing into the wind on a dark night.

     

    As it is we are on both sides of the Shiite-Sunni war, and our closest and most deeply enabled allies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar and, yes, Israel) repeatedly arm the terrorists among the various factions.


    by jollyroger on Tue, 08/12/2014 - 4:01pm

    Isn't the humanitarian effort that you appear to support dabbling in some middle ground between   shoot-em-up nation-building and just trying not to do stupid stuff?   Seems to me that we need to find our groove.  Is preventing genocide a core American value or not?  I think you think it is, no?


    by Bruce Levine on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 6:16am

    Let me try to clarify my initial thoughts on this.  I guess you are recognizing a middle ground by asserting that the president has not just sat back and tried not to make mistakes.  And I agree with you.  But I think we are in a period of both real danger that is exacerbated by our inability to define our role in the international community.  And for that I do fault the president, and adamently so.

    Did Clinton move from the president for political reasons?  Shocking, just shocking! :)

    But, more seriously, I credit anyone who is running for president to do what Clinton did, for whatever reason, in trying to articulate our role.  If it sounded a bit neo-connish to some, I think that's a fair point.  Goldberg intimated that himself.  But I would pose a challenge to all of us to try articulating our role as the richest and most powerful nation in the world.  How do you keep the gun stuff out of that picture and still be real?


    by Bruce Levine on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 9:15am

    Well, I'm not an isolationist so I guess I am stuck in a middle ground.  I'm also not eager to, say, insert U.S. forces into civil wars abroad.  I think we have to be more subtle than that and I don't think we should ever mobilize the types of forces we did in Iraq without a clear and present danger to the U.S.

    Sheesh, this is why I hate these topics.  "Mobilize forces." "Clear and present danger." What these people have done to our language!


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 9:25am

    I agree that language has been misused and that's one of the points that Lulu makes in his current blog too.  And I think we can agree that we should not be involved in civil wars as a matter of policy per se, and we are all I think permanently cautious (for sound humane reasons) of intervention (see Viet Nam and as you say Iraq).  

    But, unfortunately, for all of us I think, and definitely for me, I think it's important for us to try to shape and to understand the middle ground between neo-isolationists and knee-jerk interventionists.

    Finally, by the way, I appreciate this piece and I should have told you that.  Been busy in a good way for the most part and really didn't have a chance to tell you that.


    by Bruce Levine on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 9:30am

    I think you're asking all the right questions, Bruce.


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 9:44am

    I operate under the assumption that it's impossible to make all the right decisions, partly because of poor judgment but also because of politics. An isolationist electorate is hard to rouse even when the need is great. An interventionist electorate tends to overreact and overreach. Contrast FDR's struggle to persuade Americans to declare war on Germany before Pearl Harbor vs GW's easy warpath after 9/11.

    So the question is really who do we want to be, the sleeping giant who wakes too late or the world's policeman who kills too often.

    Imagining how earlier US intervention might have prevented genocide or what Stalin would done if the US had slipped back into isolationism, I lean to the cop. And yet, I am prouder of America's war record in our old isolationist days when we didn't have such a vast standing army or shoot our guns so readily.


    by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 1:42pm

    You will be interested in reading Paul Pillar's current piece at Consortium News. Sorry, cannot provide link.


    by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 10:25am

    This one?

    Wisdom in Obama’s ‘Don’t Do Stupid Stuff’ | Consortiumnews

     


    by EmmaZahn on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 10:44am

    Yes, thanks.


    by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 10:49am

    Thanks to you both, this says it so well:

    One should hope that Mr. Obama, as a second-term president, will not let his policies over the next two years be diverted by ill-aimed screeching of hawks. Even if he doesn’t, however, the shape and tenor of current debate risks creating a narrative, the effects of which might not be felt until the next administration, that most of the world’s maladies exist because the United States didn’t do something more, whatever that something might be.


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 11:27am

    The discombobulation evinced above by the several thoughtful comments that struggle with the  tension generated by a foolish isolationism vs. a cowboy interventionism derives from the fundamental reality that no single world power, riven as it is with internal political motivations and external geo-political/selfish economic aspirations, can legitimately confont the kind of humanitarian mandates that we intuitively honor by this discussion.

     

    I know that I am somewhat of a one-note tenor on this subject, but it reall y is increasingly evident that the problem is the fetish of  national sovereignty, which makes necessary all sorts of ad hoc doctrines like R2P, anti genocide conventions, etc.

     

    The monopoly on legitimate use of force that inheres to the state so as to make our streets safe to walk simply must migrate upwards to a world government.

     

    Any attempt to thread the needle  that has as its major predicate the projection of force by  a single nation is doomed to failure.


    by jollyroger on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 4:48pm

    OK, but in the meantime, get those people off of that mountain!  Seriously.  We cannot let them die like this. . .not when we can stop it.  I hear you, but let's just save those people and fight about it later man.


    by Bruce Levine on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 6:11pm

    Bruce, you are not falling for this concern trolling con  too? These Yatzis are the same people that a few months ago were being condemned for murdering a young woman by stoning for marrying outside the tribe. , Now they are a convenient cause celebre for  US and others to hype as an excuse to intervene. The numbers of people affected seem to be inflated by a factor of ten or more and these people just as the Xtians in Mosul seem to run at the first demand that they pay their Infidel Tax. They react just as US Conservatives and some Liberals when someone tries to make them pay their taxes, they run for the hill/s.

    There may be some of these people who will lose their head at the hands of the IS but they are probably the collaborators that sold their services to the US Occupation Forces.


    by Peter (not verified) on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 7:17pm

    I hear you Peter.  Yes, I'm going out on a limb on this one.  I cannot stand to think that we can save thousands of people, and yet we're not going to do it.  That's where I'm at.  

    Edited to add now that CNN is reporting that the siege of the mountain by ISIS has basically been broken by US air strikes.  It looks like we did what needed to be done.  And I cannot think of anything more noble (if it turns out that our involvement saved thousands and thousands of innocent civilians).  


    by Bruce Levine on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 8:52pm

    From the New York Times:

    Defense officials said late Wednesday that United States airstrikes and Kurdish fighters had broken the siege on Mount Sinjar, allowing thousands of Yazidis trapped there to escape.

    An initial report from about a dozen Marines and Special Operations forces who spent the last 24 hours on the mountain said that “the situation is much more manageable,” a senior defense official said in an interview.

    “A rescue effort now is much more unlikely,” the official said.

    Defense officials could not say how many Yazidis remained on the mountain, but Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was expected to make an statement later Wednesday night.

    The announcement came after American military advisers landed on Mount Sinjar early Wednesday to begin assessing how to organize the evacuation. The United States had said it would consider using American ground troops to assist in the rescue if recommended by the military team.


    by Bruce Levine on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 8:56pm

    It seems to have worked, thank fortune.

    What if it hadn't, though and we had been forced to send in ground forces and many of those soldiers were killed?

    I get you when you say "get those people off of that mountain."

    But it's not so easy to say when it doesn't work smoothly.


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 8:41pm

    It's looking like we saved the Yezidis, which is probably worth the killing of ISIS soldiers.  I'm still a little worried about getting dragged into a long war though; I hope that doesn't happen.


    by Aaron Carine on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 8:45pm

    And I still think the U.S. military should be abolished. If the air war on ISIS is justified, then it is the only justified American war since 1945. Our armed forces do vastly more evil than good, especially now that we no longer need them to deter the Soviet Union.


    by Aaron Carine on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 8:48pm

    Well, I would have supported sending in ground forces if it had turned out to be necessary to get them off the mountain, but I understand that to be a much harder sell and, thankfully it seems, unnecessary now.


    by Bruce Levine on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 8:58pm

    I probably shouldn't fret too much about the all to rare "easy out," here.


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 9:18pm

    What basis do you have for saying that the numbers are inflated by a factor of ten? Do you think the stoning of the woman justifies mass death and possible genocide?(ISIS will probably stone people; they are fundamentalists).  Your apparent belief that it is legitimate to impose a tax on people because of their religion is also pretty repellent.
     


    by Aaron Carine on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 8:16pm

    Okay, I just heard on CNN that the number of people in the mountains is less than was thought, but they also say that people got off the mountains because of the air strikes. However many people were up there, thousands could have died or been slaughtered if ISIS had its way. Perhaps Peter would say they deserved it.


    by Aaron Carine on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 9:07pm

    These Yatzis....

     

    Peter, the correct epithet when denigrating Yezidis (Devil Worshipers, if you wish) is not "Yatzis", as if they were replicants of the puppet running  Nulandistan Ukraine.

     

    They are "Zorros:" (no, nothing to do wiht the Disney hero), as in Zoroastrians.

     

    There,, fixed it for you.

     

    (Gurdjieff recounts several anecdotes about how he drew a circle around a Yezidi kid and hilarity ensued.)


    by jollyroger on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 8:49pm

    You inspired me to look into it a bit and I found there's no devils, just a Peacock Angel and six other Great Angels emanating from an exploding pearl and rainbows, not to mention "other dimensions."

    Unfortunately there is also one a those "holy land" thingies: He then flew around the globe in order to bless every part of it, finally landing in the area of what is now Lalish, the Yezidis most sacred part of Earth located in northern Iraq. Here Tawsi Melek was able to calm the Earth while simultaneously covering it with his peacock colors.  And, as so often seems to be the case with "holy land" thingies, it's currently neither calm nor very holy there. Which begs the question: if deities live in other dimensions, why do they care so much about what pieces of the earth their followers are inhabiting?


    by artappraiser on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 9:35pm

    How stale and uninspiring is a life without a "Holy Land", the return to which for which to yearn....(there's an adept two step avoidance of the terminal preposition...but I digress...)

     

    It might even be as mundane as the Chavez Ravine (if one of Lenny Bruce's most famous routines, Religions Incorporated, is to be believed)


    by jollyroger on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 10:28pm

    Which begs the question: if deities live in other dimensions, why do they care so much about what pieces of the earth their followers are inhabiting?

    Good question!  See Heschel, God in Search of Man! smiley


    by Bruce Levine on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 10:39pm

    OT, jolly roger & bslev: just ran across another holy land thingie, in  this report by Andrew Higgins from Slovyansk, Ukraine for the NYT, "Evidence Grows of Russian Orthodox Clergy's Aiding Ukraine Rebels":

    [....] Throughout, however, leaders have declared themselves bearers of the banner of “Holy Rus,” both a theological concept akin to the Kingdom of Heaven and a reference to a state in the Middle Ages that comprised the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia.

    Embracing Orthodox Christianity as a force to unite these now divided Slavic lands and also their own fractured movement, the rebels, fortified recently by an influx of weapons and soldiers from Russia, used their period in power here purging Slovyansk of rival Christian denominations.

    They seized the Good News Church, a large evangelical complex, moving in Russian icons and replacing Protestant services with Orthodox ones. They parked tanks in the center’s gardens and, blessed by Russian Orthodox priests chanting prayers, began lobbing shells at Ukrainian forces outside town. When the rebels fled, they needed two big trucks to haul all their weaponry.

    Petr Dudnik, the Good News Church pastor, said he did not know who exactly was behind the takeover but said it fit into a long campaign by the Russian Orthodox Church to portray competing denominations, particularly evangelicals, as a heretical fifth column inspired and financed by the United States [....]

    Instigators of the rebellion, notably Igor Strelkov, a Russian former intelligence officer, embrace a radical strand of Orthodox tradition suffused with xenophobia, a passionate expectation of the Second Coming of Christ and a belief in Russia’s right and duty to rule the lands of Holy Rus.

    Mr. Strelkov, who commanded rebel forces in Slovyansk, fled in July to Donetsk, where he became “defense minister” of a self-declared separatist state [....]


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/07/2014 - 6:36pm

    Another so called Christian Church, having an adulterous relationship with the political elements  of the world? 


    by Resistance on Sun, 09/07/2014 - 6:53pm

    The familiar confluence of religion and patriotism--not for nothing is Nevsky a saint!

     


    by jollyroger on Sun, 09/07/2014 - 11:25pm

    It is also worthy of note that the Kievan principate was the root of the Russian monarchy, so when Moscow contemplates an amputated Ukraine, it constitutes more than a mere metaphor.

     

    Sorta like the United States would have felt if the Civil War had gone the other way, and suddenly George Washington's home was no longer within the confines of the nation.


    by jollyroger on Sun, 09/07/2014 - 11:29pm

    I guess it shouldn't amaze me how easily many people fall hook line and sinker for a hyped up US propaganda campaign . Are we now to believe the BS coming from the Govt.. and the MSM is real facts?

    This is just the first PsyOps to pave the way for more  "Humanitarian" aggression. When some of our Brave Exceptional Boys are captured by the Islamic State forces and their heads are displayed on pikes on the evening news we will all be primed, ready and screaming for blood just as the Jihadist supposedly are.

    The irony of this is that it is exactly what the Islamic State leaders want, US forces returning to Iraq because they know that will cause the whole ME to explode in rage.

     


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 9:39pm

     

     Meet the new server, same as the old server.  sorry bout the double post....


    by jollyroger on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 8:52pm

    Likely story, always one in the group who wants a second bite of the apple.


    by Bruce Levine on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 8:57pm

    I make a spectacular funny, replete with esoteric references and cute puns, and that's all you can say?

     

    Musta' been a tough wednesday at the shop.


    by jollyroger on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 9:22pm

    You do deserve better JR, my bad.  I'm rusty.


    by Bruce Levine on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 10:28pm

    speaking of funny, you may have missed this

    A famous Burns and Schreiber routine features a faith healer who tries to cure a "poor unfortunate" of the immobility that afflicts one of his hands. 'Oh Lord, make one hand like the other!'.  The Lord complies.

     

    Edit to add:  The protagonist is a recently converted MOT, who when asked, inter alia, if he has been washed in the blood of the lamb replies (with an accent you will recognize) "I can't even imagine that..."

     


    by jollyroger on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 10:45pm

    So do you consider the U.N. a part of this whole concern troll thing? Here's the headline story at their News Centre right now:

    ‘Barbaric’ sexual violence perpetrated by Islamic State militants in Iraq – UN

    13 August 2014 – Two senior United Nations officials today condemned in the strongest terms the “barbaric acts” of sexual violence and “savage rapes” the armed group Islamic State (IS) has perpetrated on minorities in areas under its control.

    In a joint statement from Baghdad, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence (SRSG) in Conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov urged the immediate protection of civilians [....]

    But wait there's more

    Iraq: “Immediate action needed to protect human rights of Yazidis in grave danger” – UN experts
    GENEVA (12 August 2014) – A group of United Nations human rights experts today expressed their grave concern at the imminent danger of massacre faced by the Yazidi population forced to flee Sinjar in northern Iraq and other minority communities currently exposed to attacks by members of the ‘Islamic State’ (IS, (formerly known as ISIS).

    The experts on the rights of minorities, internal displacement, summary executions, freedom of religion, violence against women and discrimination against women called for immediate action to protect the human rights of Yazidis and other affected communities, including the fundamental right to life.

    “All possible measures must be taken urgently to avoid a mass atrocity and potential genocide within days or hours – civilians need to be protected on the ground and escorted out of situations of extreme peril,” urged the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Rita Izsák.

    Ms. Izsák cautioned that “the responsibility to protect populations at risk of atrocity crimes falls both on the Iraqi Government and the international community.”

    “We are witnessing a tragedy of huge proportions unfolding in which thousands of people are at immediate risk of death by violence or by hunger and thirst,” warned the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Chaloka Beyani. “Humanitarian aid must be delivered quickly and no efforts should be spared to protect all groups forcefully displaced by this conflict,” he added.

    The UN has received verified reports that ‘IS’ is systematically hunting down members of minority groups who remain trapped in areas under their control and giving them the ultimatum, “convert or die,” stated Christof Heyns, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. “We cannot stand by in the face of such atrocities. International actors must do all in their power to support those on the ground with the capacity to protect lives.”

    The situation has continued deteriorating rapidly and at present thousands of members of the Yazidi community are trapped on Mount Sinjar, threatened with death by the IS and without access to food and water.

    “Freedom of religion and belief is being denied in the most gross and systematic way possible – through the attempted extermination of religious minorities.” The Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion and belief, Heiner Bielefeldt,” said [....]

    Pre-emptive: I can guess what you are going to say next: lackeys of the hegemon...creators of the evil Israeli nation, after all...


    by artappraiser on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 9:51pm

    I feel much better knowing the UN is on the job and putting out sternly worded missives about this tragedy. Maybe they will send in some of their cholera infected peacekeepers to insure the health and safety of the poor souls.


    by Peter (not verified) on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 10:33pm

    So you admit it's a tragedy? Good to see, because you hadn't before, you'd been arguing almost the opposite.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 2:15am

    US forces were met with some resistance as they executed a night mission into the heart of the Yatzi tax evaders mountain haven. Calm was restored when they proved that they hadn't brought any embedded IRS agents. The planned rescue mission of Biblical proportions was canceled because no one there reads the Bible and the masses of refugees didn't exist or were kidnapped or something.

    The resisters returned to their ritual sacrifice, of goats and naked young women,  to Shaitan and  compared the Green Cards left by the Infidels promising a new life in a country where there are tens of thousands of professionals to help them dodge taxes. They also enjoyed a beautiful light show as Infidel bombers rained Hellfire down on the evil Islamic State tax collectors.


    by Peter (not verified) on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 11:21am

    Although embracing sufficiently frank irony to map out your position vis-a-vis statements of intent from officialdom, your comment is (sadly) so incoherent as to make it really difficult to tease out the thrust of any actual argument.

     

    Style points for invoking taxes and the proper spelling of Shaitan, however.  Special accolades for bringing in naked young women..., slight deduction for failing to specify virginity thereof.


    by jollyroger on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 12:48pm

    A variant of Poe's law seems to be raising its head here. I really can't tell if you're making fun of people who have such prejudices against Yazidis, or if you yourself are actually so over-the-top with these prejudices that you only seem like such a caricature.


    by Verified Atheist on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 12:51pm

    Verified Atheist, my feeling is that Peter means it.


    by Aaron Carine on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 4:21pm

    My Onionesk rant seems to have confused and upset some of the tender sensibilities here but be assured no malice was intended except that aimed at Liberal Interventionists. They won this round of the PR and Propaganda push and the Humanitarian Bombs are raining down again, never mind that as the actual facts come to light most of this "tragedy" was fiction.

    The important thing is that the R2P Interventionists can feel proud of  Amerika again as we drop our Bombs For Peace And Humanity on Iraq once again.


    by Peter (not verified) on Fri, 08/15/2014 - 11:16am

    One doesn't have to be an interventionist to find the stereotypes you were employing offensive. How did you think mocking conservatory bigotry was supposed to make your point while arguing against "Liberal Interventionists"? Had you thought that through at all? Even a little bit?


    by Verified Atheist on Fri, 08/15/2014 - 1:00pm

     The tragedy was not fiction, unless Peter thinks all the different sources have been fabricating data(and I would expect him to provide some evidence for this).  He sounds like Edward Herman telling us that the Rwandan genocide and the Srebrenica massacre never happened.


    by Aaron Carine on Fri, 08/15/2014 - 2:36pm