A World Afire
"We are at a very, very critical moment for Afghanistan. The election legitimacy hangs in the balance. The future potential of a transition hangs in the balance", gravely pronounced U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry from Kabul.
This photo provided by the anti-government activist group
Aleppo Media Center (AMC), which has been authenticated based on its
contents and other AP reporting, shows Free Syrian Army fighters running
at one of the front lines in the town of Sheikh Najjar, in Aleppo,
Syria, Tuesday June 10, 2014. UNCREDITED — AP
Most unfortunate, just as the United States is preparing its final troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the spitting dispute over the final corruption-ridden election result for President threatens the tribal effects of a civil war. Perhaps now averted. One small victory for Afghanistan and the U.S. Not that the future looks too bright, with the spectre of a resurgent Taliban with no well-armed and -trained Western military to hold them back.
On the other hand, Afghanistan's military and its police has been trained and re-trained by Western military officers left behind to mentor them to ensure they are capable of defending themselves. And then one recalls that yes, of course, Iraq's military was trained as well by the departing Western military to ensure it too could defend itself. And in Jordan, American military trainers are doing the same for the Syrian rebels, many of whom are now choosing to join the Islamic State.
The Islamic State has, despite its young age, done an end run on the United States'-trained Iraqi army, and demonstrated how ably the Taliban will be able to re-occupy their administration of Afghanistan.
They, like the Islamic State, can then go about destroying all vestiges of other religious symbols forming a part of the region's pre-Islamic heritage.
While at the same time destroying the hopes of women in those countries for the advantage of equality and opportunity to expand their future horizons, benefiting the entire country. Their aspirations will be humbled by a return to the burqa, the home and child-rearing. The latter two not ignoble, the former ignominiously humiliating to the freedom of the female spirit. But Islam decrees it.
Gaza's collapse into wholesale martyrdom to avail the Palestinians in the Strip international sympathy and their tyrannical Hamas overseers funding from proud Islamists across the Middle East, Europe and North America, provides another glimpse into a bleak future for a people so accustomed to victimhood they regard Israel as their oppressor and Hamas as their shining knight which just happens to insist they must see themselves as human sacrifices for the Islamist ideal realized.
Hamas, desperate to receive some measure of funding that will enable them to continue their administration of Gaza, unable to pay the 50,000 of their 'state employees', fearing collapse of the state, welcomes Israel's response to the ongoing barrage of rockets, knowing more will be supplied, happily paid for by allies like oil-monied Qatar.
Ferocious fear-mongering named terrorism, and brutal atrocities have a purpose; the Islamic caliphate has been named and aspires to broaden its appeal and its territory. Funding there is no problem whatever; the Islamic State jihadists raise up to $1-million daily selling crude oil recovered from oilfields in Iraq, smuggled to refineries in Turkey and Iran. IS fighters enable Mosul area oil to fund the spread of the caliphate.
Exclusive: Islamic State strengthens grip on northern Iraq by raising millions from sale of oil through Kurdistan to Turkey and Iran
Iraqi Shiite tribal fighters in Baghdad's Sadr City Photo: AP Photo/Karim Kadim
And Iran, with its nuclear ambitions and its proceedings to acquire the ultimate weapon intact from the censure of the internatonal community is also expanding its purview, threatening Saudi Arabia and much of the rest of the Middle East, while Hezbollah aids Syria in butchering Syrian Sunnis and the United Nations appeals to the West to commit to welcoming Syrian refugees.
Compassion importing the seeds of 'revolution' within their own landscapes while their cultural, social, judicial and security values wither in the inevitability of time and dilution of the population endemic to the nation. How now the voice of reason in a season of unpredictable firestorms where reason has been abandoned for the passion of power and conflicts of perishing passion?
Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Nuclear Technology, Syria, United States
posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 14, 2014
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