RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
NOTE: Since the following thoughts were written, Iraq has summoned courage and skill and applied those strengths to fostering her national sovereignty. In other words, she has moved towards fixing the errors and solving the problems the loss of Ramadi illuminated. I wish her all the very best. Iraqis, Arab and Kurd, consider themselves Iraqis. They have appreciation for assistance and training supplied them over decades by European, American and other nations. They have feelings of national identity and prefer national sovereignty to scatter by Iranian meddlers. Post-Ramadi, Iraqi leadership’s throttling of corruption and building of military success have occurred. As would be anticipated from success in specifically those struggles, Iraqi national sovereignty, which is the grand strategic goal of all effort there — to include an occupation as discussed below — shows as difficult but doable. Bear this in mind reading what follows.
Iraq is the hinge of the ME. It always has been. A quiet Iraq makes a quiet ME. An unquiet Iraq makes an unquiet ME. Iraq as of now will not fight to maintain her independence. (She has done so in the past, successfully, but will not now until given time and space to prepare.) Therefore, she cannot maintain her independence. Therefore, unless she is quieted, Iraq will continue to foster an unquiet ME.
The post-2011 mission to train up the Iraqi Army to defend Iraqi independence has failed and cannot succeed in conditions extant and demanded.
There are now two opportunities that are responsible and/or reasonable. Two only: (1) occupy Iraq, or, (2) leave Iraq. The first opportunity is responsible and reasonable. The second opportunity is reasonable.
Irresponsibility has made the ME a heaving, screaming chaos.
Therefore, to quiet the ME, occupy Iraq for, say, five decades, conceptually at least, so her people can go to school, learn to live by building families, farms, businesses, industries, tourism, government, a professional NCO Corps that works and an Officer Corps that plans, commands and moves to contact. A complete cultural revolution. Culture-splicing I have called it.
Notre Père, Maurice Duruflé
– Put America on full war status.
– Mew up the fifth column in America: the Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas, ISIS, Quds, PLA, FSB and Caribbean, Mexican, Central American, Middle Eastern, Chinese and Russian druggists — and their front organizations, such as philanthropic foundations — Ford, Rockefeller, Getty, Carnegie, Stone, Soros, etc. — and US Government Executive Branch and shadow money-changer conduits.
– Task US Armed Forces swiftly to distrain the Iraqi government in favor of an American-led SCAPME, of which see below.
– Invite the Iraqi Army to join the American initiative.
– Invite India and Russia to join The United States in this and other global strategic initiatives, especially with regard to checking China, the largest existential enemy of all three nations. Related.
– Task US Armed Forces swiftly to exterminate ISIS, drive Iranians from Iraq, admin Iraqi territory and support the current semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government, reinforcing it with military, diplomatic and financial assets.
– Announce an American-led SCAPME, Supreme Commander Allied Powers Middle East, a U.S. Army Officer, having the same powers in Iraq MacArthur and Eisenhower had in Japan and Germany. Consider their authority, actual and potential, to include Iraq, Syria and the Arabian Peninsula south of Iraq.
– Invite sovereign nations of all continents to join the SCAPME effort.
– Establish an Iraq Military Academy patterned on the United States Military Academy at West Point.
– Inform Iran and the poppy farmers of Afghanistan, credibly of course, that if they would like to dance, SCAPME will oblige them.
– Remove Koran and Sharia from the Iraqi Constitution. Make them rewrite it as a secular document with zero religious law and zero sacerdotal influence.
– Do not partition Iraq into Kurdish, Shiia and Sunni nation states.
– Let Americans, Europeans and others settle in Iraq, marry Iraqis, raise families, invest, etc. And vice-versa. All by regulated, regular immigration and emigration procedures in Iraq under SCAPME and elsewhere under regular governmental procedures.
– Let Iraqi oil revenue reimburse (1) American and other national taxpayers for their expenses quieting Iraq and (2) individual families who have lost members in the effort to quiet Iraq and through her the ME.
And if America has not intelligence to do this, then get Americans out of Iraq and let the ME to the devices and destinies of its own internals. Bye bye Arabs. Bye bye Caliphism. Hello Bakken. Hello national sovereignties.
However, one way or another, one day or another, the world’s sovereign nations are going to crush the lunacy of Caliphist imperialism — and not only that of ISIS!. Better it were by protecting (Occupation/SCAPME) the human source of said lunacy from itself than by letting it stand astride the world’s sovereign nations’ communications crying, “Havoc!”
Related 1: Vapor clouds in Syria.
Related 2: How ISIS fights. Of course, with the Iraqi Army not fighting — and US Army forbidden to engage — ISIS’ tactics work.
Related 3: Vapor clouds at Foggy Bottom.
Update 1: My comments on Stratfor’s Decade Forecast 2015-2025.
Update 2: Socio-political types say 90% of Iraq’s problems are political. That is the opposite of the truth. 90% of Iraq’s problems are military. A country arises around its victorious army. If a country’s army is not victorious, the country’s independence or existence ceases. Politics occurs after an army clears the area. Today the Iraqi Army is not victorious so Iraqi politics is impossible.
Update 3: GEN (R) David Petraeus granted The Washington Compost a interview which reveals the best thinking of a Beltway insider post-Ramadi. That, however, falls short of the need. The need is to cast away all assumptions regarding alliances and interests and look exactly at what is happening and by whom. Throw away the current, agreed puzzle pieces of world order and look freshly, without reference to those puzzle pieces, at the actual phenomenology in the ME and beyond. Trace the vectors and name what they imply. Look at the activity as an impartial observer, with no assumptions regarding shoulds, ifs or musts. I guarantee, that exercise will produce resolves like unto the foregoing.
Update 4: Following the fall of Ramadi and Palmyra to ISIS, minions deem those strategic defeats tactical setbacks amidst strategic success. Thanks to Steven Hayward at Power Line for aggregating these comments on that deeming:
Update 5: The Washington Compost has doubts.
Update 6: Max Boot’s thoughts.
Update 7: Richard Fernandez: Broken Symmetry. A subtitle might be, Be Yourself, Don’t Play God With History And Don’t Tempt Fate.
I commented: Reference these near-closing lines by Fernandez: Broomfield was not in charge of tomorrow. The difference was, he knew it. He was willing to do what he thought best and let the chips fall where they may.
I was rereading this week Patton’s speech(s) to Third Army before they deployed to France — far more profane than the movie version — and was struck by the point he makes as Fernandez does above: a man does what he has to do because he is a man, he has his honor to embody, to concretize, and not because he has a vision of some grand design on history. A man acts because of who he is, God’s grandest creation, not because of what he wants. God will take care of the wanting bit.
In Vedic philosophy there is a compound word for this: nishkamakarma: activity without desire for its consequences. Or, as General Jackson wrote while still a Cadet at West Point: Duty is ours, consequences are God’s.
Update 8: GEN (R) Petraeus: The Islamic State Is Not Our Biggest Problem In Iraq
Update 9: Sultan Knish: De-Islamization Is The Only Way To Defeat ISIS
Update 10: A Story From The Fall Of Ramadi
Update 11: Michael Ledeen: Who Is IS?
Update 12: The Blindness Of The Ideologically Bound.
Update 13: Charles Hill On The Iran Deal
Update 14: Paul Bremer made a disastrous strategic mistake dissolving the Iraqi Armed Forces and General Staff
Update 15: Ignore The Dire Warnings About Our Lives Because It’s Just Hysteria
Update 16: A most compelling post, thank you! Puts me in mind of Teilhard de Chardin, who saw in the hard sciences of geological and paleontological process and result the phenomenology of divine life, of God alive and kicking, so to speak. A novel immanentalism of sorts, precedented but unique in the history of Christian thought. Here Fernandez sees in structural engineering attitudes phenomenological actualities of social engineering assumptions, deftly expressed. Other commenters also appreciate this post’s brilliant helpfulness.
Update 17: Institute For The Study Of War: ISIS’s Global Strategy: 2015
Update 18: Muslim Brotherhood smoking gun.
Update 19: Some Anti-Colonial Globalists (note the oxymoron) have figured out a new map of the Middle East.
Update 20: Sane priorities in Iraq circa October 2015 would sound like these:
- Foster Iraqi National Sovereignty
- Foster Iraqi Full-Spectrum Armed Forces
- Foster Iraqi Political and Ministerial Reformation
- Foster Iraqi COIN and CT In Occupied Iraq
- Foster Iraqi Strategic Partnerships With USA, USA Corporations And USA-Allied Nations
Update 21: Syriac Christian women also are fighting ISIS
Update 22: Post-retaking of Ramadi by INA SOF units:
With respect, Paul, Newsweek, P4’s former aide and your own assessments and speculations are far from facts on the ground. They amount to FUD, though I know you do not mean them as such.
1- Maliki was/is an Iran protégé. Abadi, no way, he’s an Iraqi patriot and quite an intelligent and resourceful one at that. Iraqis generally, both Sunni and Shia, are Iraqi patriots. Sadr and Badr types, hardly an in-country majority, are Iraqi Iranians, but only so long as they are paid.
2- INA SOF units that have taken Ramadi comprise, very deliberately, both Sunni and Shia personnel, and they, officer and enlisted, are forbidden, on pain of expulsion, from sectarian speech or activities. They train as Iraqis, for Iraqis and work together for Iraqi National Sovereignty, including freedom from Iran. This non-sectarian and nationalist requirement for participation in these units, together with intense combat arms training in small and gradually larger unit combat, gives these troops the ability to accomplish the mission of retaking Ramadi for Iraq. Credit Abadi, INA, Iraqis both Sunni and Shia and US Armed Forces for creating a force that can do this at Ramadi. And it ain’t over ’til it’s over.
3- Iraqi Shia militias, loyal to Iran, have tried to take credit for the Ramadi success, and they have tried to convince Shia personnel in the non-sectarian INA SOF units that they are chumps for helping Sunnis (Ramadi is in Anbar, Sunni land). Without effect, as you see. Abadi and these INA SOF units are winning the propaganda war against Iran and stooges as well as the ground war against Salafists-Caliphists.
I’ll stop there. Watch it, consider your sources. Newsweek?!? We Are All Socialists Now Newsweek?!?!! You want to credit them? Really, Paul, really? 10 to 1 David French has steno-ed a plant from White House or CIA, both Iran partisans and Iraq distainers, never gotten out from behind his desk, maybe even out of his pajamas.
Update 23: Yazidi female line battalion
Update 24: Good News: Zoroastrian revival among Kurds
Update 25: Iran, India, Russia, Kurdistan, Iraq, O My!
Update 26: The Religion Iranian Mullahs Fear Most: Zoroastrianism
Update 27: Petraeus, who was just at Bilderberg, has joined lefties to push gun restriction/confiscation. Good grief!
Update 28:Kurdish Women Soldiers Announce Military Academy For Arab Women To Fight Daesh
Update 29: What To Do About George Soros
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
