
© YouTube Screen CaptureThe Iraq War -- Regime Change.
So now a huge Hardcore Sunnistan stretches all the way from the suburbs of Aleppo to Tikrit and from Mosul to the Jordanian/Iraqi border - the same one that dissolved in 2003 when Shock and Awe turned into Mission (Un)Accomplished.
In an eerie echo of Dick Cheney's army's footprints reverberating in the sands of Anbar province, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and their coalition of the willing (jihadis, Islamists, Ba'athists and tribal sheikhs) now pose as the "liberators" of Iraqi Sunnis from the clutches of an "evil" Shi'ite majority government in Baghdad.
In addition, ISIS also controls the PR wars.
Here, a jihadi details how any sort of possible Washington "kinetic" involvement will be interpreted as an unholy alliance between the Empire and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki against the underdogs.
From a Sunni perspective, it's down with Iraq's Counter-terrorism law; down with de-Ba'athification (with the ascent of neo-Ba'athist Jaysh Rijal al-Tariqa al-Naqshbandia -- JRTN, led by former Saddam honcho Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri); down with the Interior Ministry in Baghdad going after Sunni politicians; down with protests being crushed.
At the same time, it's the return of the US-sponsored Sahwa (Sons of Iraq) -- who fiercely fought al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2007, the mother of ISIS -- and the return of assorted Shi'ite militias (Muqtada al-Sadr not only repelled the new wave of US "military advisers" -- that's how it started in Vietnam -- but also warned that his own badass
Men in Black will "shake the ground" fighting ISIS.) The mid-2000s are the new normal; it's gonna be militia hell all over again.
Mesopotamia, we got a problem. Neo-Ba'athists want nothing but a secular Iraq run by Sunnis, Saddam-style (rather former neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi.) ISIS wants a Caliphate extending all across the Levant under Sharia law. Something's got to give.
What will give will be the Iraqi nation itself -- the balkanized, protracted (intended) consequence of the 2003 invasion and occupation, finally transmogrified into Jihad Central.
Comment: The Nation is right about the threats posed by government privacy and public transparency, but blind to the fact that government transparency would not let the people exercise their 'right' to vote the perps out of office or coerce change in policy: elections are rigged, the people hold no power, and American democracy is a total illusion. It's rotten to the core.