ISIS is a giant trolling operation, they’ve made too many enemies, US, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Syria, fight on the same side (WTF?). The way it’s going, the US is backing Iranian Shiite militias to go fight them (wtf?). With a puppet Iraqi govt, this is going to give Iran a free hand to run the show.
My expectation: Once things cool down a bit and they come to the negotiating table, one of the powers that be will probably try to recruit them as an asset. I suspect it will be the Saudi-US nexus, as the other option, supporting Iran to do the lifting down there doesn’t seem to be likely. But you never know I guess.
Just saw this photo on Business Insider - that’s Jordan’s King. OMFG - I’d vote for this dude who’d fly the jets himself to bomb the shit out of those wankers
Well since they were negotiating for her release I doubt they’d find it that funny. Not to mention they executed her anyways. I’m just saying I’d have added a bit of pizzaz if it were me. So no, I don’t think you had a very good point. Just as Al Quaida didn’t piss themselves laughing too hard when Bin Laden and a host of his top leaders were killed at various times from either operations or drone strikes. She wasn’t trying to become a martyr she was trying to blow enemies with a vest. Failing that and getting dropped from an airplane is unlikely to be considered a win to anybody.
And the US is tired of cleaning up the world’s trash. At this point if they leave the US alone, our involvement is likely to be minimal. I really can’t express how little I care that they burnt some books in an Iraqi library. Certainly not enough to fly US citizens around the world to die in a sandpit for people that are unwilling to mobilize their own population to push these guys out.
Possibly, but unlikely. Would probably take a pretty large scale event.
Two ten year, trillion dollar wars in the region fighting extremists while most of the world sat on the sidelines and laughed at the world police left people a little gunshy.
I’m certain you know that the Americans have acted out of their own self-interest with little regard to it’s knock on effects in far too many places around the world. This is not necessarily a bad thing if you subscribe to the ‘us vs them’ mentality that most Americans tend to do but it would be inaccurate to use the term ‘world police’ even if instances like perhaps Somalia were carried out with the best of intentions.
One of the most baffling decisions was to collude with the M16 in an effort to remove the democratically elected leader Mosaddegh which has led to the mess of modern day Iran.
Anyway, I suspect that the inevitable rise of a multi-polar world will reduce American appetite for conflict and a more important question is how the current structure of the UN Security Council will accomodate the countries that will demand a seat at the high table. You suspect that Brazil which will probably become a LatAm leader, India which will continue to grow with it’s rising economic importance and Turkey which looks like being a strategically important country this century all have strong cases but this requires a ‘Yes’ by all present members which looks highly unlikely.
It will be fascinating seeing all this play out in the coming decades and there are some really interesting things going on behind the scenes like the talk of a BRICS bank being in the advanced stages.
I think the idea of a BRICS bank is fine, but the irreverant part of me snickers a bit, wondering which country’s officials will successfully steal, graft, or divert more funds out of it? Will it be Brazil, Russia, India, China, or South Africa???
It’s a tough call, really. So many possibilities here.
That region of the world is so volatile that your enemy one day can become the lesser evil opponent the next day, before turning into the enemy of your next enemy the following day.
Unless there is an imminent threat to national security, better to stay out of that mess.
If the experts are to be believed, and the environmentalists don’t screw things up, the US will be oil independent in 10 years (or at least only relying on Canada) and we will no longer have to care about the Middle East.