Aussie wrote on Sep 7^th, 2014 at 6:51pm:



I dont want to hear you uncl;es glory days thanks you have said enough what you think what a fool he/they was..you dont have to go into details...

my baby hood was spent in a dug out shelter...

your family do you no justice or service.. I am glad I will never meet any of you...

they are not GLORIFYING WAR you stupid people..

they are saying THANK YOU...to those who did come back.. some in pieces...

I’ll fight if there’s a decent enemy worth fighting.

Being pointed in the direction of a region or a religion or a seventh century prophet and told to take out whatever moves is just asking for trouble. All you end up doing is running in and out of people’s houses, trying to interpret what they’re telling you wiith a gun to their head and their families screaming in the background.

It’s a recipe for PTSD on all sides with no winner, no loser, and no end. Back in the War To End All Wars, both sides came out to shake hands and sing Christmas songs.

Those days are long gone. The only enemy worth fighting today is the defeated, lumpen mass of ha has and gigglers who have so little to live for they want to kill everyone else off.

And they don’t even know what killing is.

Fck Anzac Spirit, and fck the gigglers who think they know.

Following last week's admission by Obama that the US does not have a plan for ISIS, Julie Bishop has just said that getting rid of ISIL will be hard to do. According to Julie Bishop, ISIL is not just an army or a country, it's an ideology.

And how do you carpet bomb an ideology? How do you contain it? Destroy ISIL in Iraq, and they'll re-appear in Syria.

What Barack Obama means when he says the US does not have a plan is just that - the US does not have a plan. It looks like they're now leaning towards Assad in Syria after years of having him in the Axis of Evil.

And they would do anything for a new Saddam in Iraq. The US would do anything for a functioning secular state in the heart of oil country.

The Arab League will be discussing ISIS this week. This is the only hope. Only Arabs can deal with ISIS. If the US gets involved, Iraq will become the new front for global jihad. And let's face it, ISIS is a splinter group of Al Qaida, a Saudi creation.

The Saudis have been playing both sides for years. The Saudis receive weapons and training from the US, and similtaneously fund Al Qaida. The Saudis are the quietest geo-political player in the game. While Iran bangs on about Great Satans, the Saudis quietly get down to business. The Saudis are such good friends of Uncle that when a Saudi-backed terror group flew planes into the World Trade Centre, Uncle flew the bin Laden family out of America.

The Saudis will join the Arab League this week, but it's the Egyptians who will press the case for destroying ISIS. The Egyptian generals are over Saudi Arabia and Qatar's meddling, Morsi is still in jail, and the majority of Egyptians are over Islamicist politics.

The minority, however, are at risk of joining ISIS. All the disgruntled Arab Spring resistance fighters are potential ISIS candidates. All the disgruntled jihadists around the world are potential "citizens" of ISIS.

As Bishop says, ISIS is not a state, it's a state of mind. Again, reponding with military means alone will not solve the problem. The region needs to get together to address this problem. ISIS is as much a security issue within other Arab states as it's an issue in Iraq and Syria.

Iraq has been turned into failed state. While the Coalition caused this problem, the Coalition cannot fix the problem. This is a regional Middle Eastern issue, best solved by a regional partnership. Any military campaign by a Western "coalition of the willing" will only make the enemy stronger and more determined.

aquascoot wrote on Sep 8^th, 2014 at 12:06pm:


I don't think anyone's saying we should. The issue is how to solve the problem, and who.

If we're looking at a military solution, you need boots on the ground. Air strikes are only a start - you can't finish a job with air strikes.

The boots on the ground need to be locals. If Uncle and Mother go in, you'll create a front for global jihad. If Uncle and Mother go in, they'll never get out.

The locals need to agree on a strategy - this is where diplomacy comes in. The days of Uncle picking sides and playing them against each other has twisted US foreign policy into knots. Now, Uncle doesn't know whether he supports Assad in Syria, or the resistance. Uncle doesn't know whether he supports another corrupt Shi'ite regime in Iraq, or someone else (and there is no one else). In all the other countries Uncle's meddled in - Afghanistan, Egypt, Palestine - Uncle chops and changes teams like an inept coach.

Remember, the US supports the most fundamentalist state in the world: Saudi Arabia. The UK supported the most dangerous terrorist leader in the world at the time: Ghadafi. It wasn't a corrupt Arab state that released the Lockerby bombers, it was Mother England. It wasn't the Arab states who drew Ghadafi into a warm embrace, it was the UK and Europe.

Since the end of the Cold War, Western intervention in the Middle East has been a spectacular failure. Hearing Obama say that he doesn't have a plan for Iraq and Syria is such refreshing honesty. In Rumsfeld terminology, this is a known-unknown. Backing leaders like Saddam and Ghadafi et al, and then throwing them away when they turn on you is a recipe for disaster.

As the source of much of the world's energy, the Middle East needs to be secure. How you secure it, and who you back, is pivotal. Obama was elected with a mandate to withdraw US forces from Iraq, not send them back in. I understand that you have to face problems when they happen, but you need to do this with brains, not brawn.

The Middle East is in the situation it is today thanks to the Western support for dictatorships and direct military involvement. The Middle East is in this situation because very few Arab states have made the transition to popularly elected governments. The Middle East is still a collection of tribes and tribal allegiances, with very few stable republics. Rather than fostering and strengthening local systems of governance and popular representation, Western intervention has merely backed tribes, trained their armies and security forces, and let them do their job of supressing their populations rather than including them. The most recent example of this is the al Malaki government in Iraq, backed all the way by Uncle.

If you ask me, it's time the Middle East started to solve its own problems, and it's time we started to look for alternative sources of energy.

aquascoot wrote on Sep 8^th, 2014 at 2:39pm:


As our tall glass of water PM, Mr Abbott, put it, it's baddies versus baddies. We can't drop bombs on the entire population of Syria and Iraq. Someone needs to be left standing to run the shop.

Particularly Iraq - it's an oil state.

Air strikes are good at one thing: making enemies of populations. The bombing of Vietnam - more TNT used than WWII - did fck all. The bombing of Cambodia led to the rise of Pol Pot.

Mind you, the bombing of Serbia did lead to the fall of Milosevic, but his government was not an insurgency. What's happening in Syria and Iraq right now is not conventional war. It's guerrilla war, and for this you need an entirely different approach to knee-jerk displays of force.

The Maoist slogan for guerrilla war was the weak overcoming the strong. In guerrilla war, mobile and lightweight militias have the ability to turn the bloated weight of the enemy against itself. local resistance forces have on their side is time. The US has to pull out eventually, and the administrations it leaves behind are usually weak and unpopular. A newly-established regime is only as strong as its army. US trained troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan have taken their skills and their weapons and joined the other side.

A conventional show of force will not destroy ISIS. This time, the West needs diplomacy to get Arab leaders on side. Arabs themselves have not taken to fondly to militant jihadists. Al Qaida was despised by the majority of Iraqis, just as Egyptians turned against the fundamentalist leadership of Morsi. It is not an axiom that, given the opportunity, Arabs will elect Islamicist leaders and call for Sharia law.

It is far more likely that bombing Iraq and Syria to Kingdom Come will unite them against the West. If led well, bombings unify populations, as wartime England showed.

The world could take a leaf out of Mao's book - the weak shall overcome the strong.

If the Cold War taught us anything, it is this. Top-down hierarchies and bloated state buraucracies are inefficient and unpopular. Fascism and communism failed for this very reason, just as we failed in Vietnam.

If we don't learn from history, we'll be in Iraq forever.

Karnal wrote on Sep 8^th, 2014 at 12:48pm:


That sounds like a call to halt Middle Eastern/Muslim immigration until they grow up and sort out their pathologies and join the modern world.

With the US becoming dependent on nothing more sinister than Canada, the Middle East is fast becoming China's problem.  They know it and so they are ready to tango with Russia. (that'll be an interesting thing to behold - two dishonest, corrupt swindlers trying to outwit each other).
Once the Arab oil become economically marginal, they will be like Africa - sad but irrelevant.


Didn't think it was in you, PB, to be a 'realpolitiker'. Well done.

Indeed. I, like millions o:f others, gave them the benefit of universalism, of common, shared humanity going beyond religion or ideology.


Big fvkn mistake.

No shared humanity, no shared values, no universalist common ground.
1400 years of struggle is right, post-modern bromides of post-secular wisdom is balls.
Not going to give them the benefit the second time. Nobody is. (Except Brain, of course, but he will spinelessly excuse anything as long as it is 'other' - he is an ethical tourist of the worst kind, will praise every misery he doesn't have to live in.)

Soren wrote on Sep 8^th, 2014 at 9:45pm:


But not contractors, eh? Uncle cleaned up on all those Iraqi utilities - not to mention Pizza Hut and Subway. Even the company that took down that Saddam statue sent Uncle a bill for a few million.

Money for jam, no?

Please, old chap, don't be so hard on yourself. You gave those Iraqis the benefit of submitting to the shared humanity of carpet bombing. No one can say you didn't extend yourself. You've given so much love to these people - no doubt the influence of your Lutheran saviour.

One day, they'll thank you, old boy. I'm sure of it.