Replies

Can’t tell who the players are without a score card...

Now let’s see, this ISIS bunch are presumed to be Sunnis, right? And the Muslim Brotherhood, the ones that gave the franchise to al-Qaeda, they are also Sunni? The ISIS is WAY more radical than most anybody who has yet come along, and they seem to be driven by some pretty big egos. Like forming a caliphate, and inviting all Muslims to join into it. This should sit so well with the Shi’ites, of which in southern Iraq and all of Iran, are much in the majority. But wait, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, now isn’t he Shi’ite? And isn’t that where most of the sectarian disagreement in Iraq springs from, the fact that al-Maliki was “democratically” elected, i.e., that there were WAY more Shi’ites voting than Sunnis, and naturally, the vote went for the Shi’ite guy?

Sunnis are a definite minority within Iraq, as well as the Kurds, but the Kurds look at things much more pragmatically. The Kurds are doing business with BOTH sides, while probably despising them both, in approximately equal measure. Not to let that get in the way of turning a quick buck.

Now, all the while, the Current Occupant has been kind of favoring the Muslim Brotherhood, at the expense of the Shi’ites, as evidenced first in Egypt, then Libya, and more recently, in Syria, where Bashar al-Assad, while not himself a Shi’ite, has accepted the assistance of Iran sort of under the table. Most of the “liberation” forces are Sunni, or of some connection with the Muslim Brotherhood, so this would be a sort of proxy war going on between the Sunnis, as represented by ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, and in a less distinguished role, the Current Occupant now squatting in the White Hut, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, representing the Shi’ites.

The royal house of Saud does not have clean hands here, not at all. Mostly much too sophisticated and urbane to soil themselves in anything like actual engagement in combat, they have been financing both the US military as a sort of surrogate mercenary army, and the Sunni “freedom fighters” with the Muslim Brotherhood and their various franchise groups. But even the Saudis have found it necessary to protect their very personal hides by putting some of their own troops on the Iraqi border, because the Iraqi army is no longer able to maintain that commitment. And the Americans have abandoned the region.

The pin on the grenade has been pulled, dropped and lost in the dirt, and the hand of its holder grows weary....