The US’ way of waging war is to build outposts in semi-safe locations, then venture forth to battle using its tremendous mobility advantage.
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The US’ way of waging war is to build outposts in semi-safe locations, then venture forth to battle using its tremendous mobility advantage.
[Warning: Death, Violence, Blood]
US politicians speak about “The Rule of Law” as though it’s a valuable and important thing that the US promotes and supports, not a political convenience. Recently, Trump has revealed that to be gold paint on cheap plywood, but the US has always been more interested in lip-service than reality.
It looks like the situation has evolved to the point where we can’t even talk about Kurdistan. There is now no such place.
It sounds like the Kurds have been out-maneuvered by the Iraqi regime; then left twisting in the wind by their American backers. Iraqi Abrams M-1 tanks (which are basically invincible against the light vehicles the Kurds have) were the convincing argument – the Iraqis inter-penetrated Kurdish positions in the Kirkuk area, essentially a peaceful “overrun” maneuver – and the Kurds realized that if they offered resistance, they’d be slaughtered.
When the US invaded Iraq and overthrew the government, we heard a bit about “nation-building” until the establishment discovered it no longer knew how to do that, and/or wasn’t willing to pay the price that it paid rebuilding Germany, Japan, and South Korea. [Read more…]
Content warning: War, Death, Violent imagery.
The other day I posted about the Iraqi army advance on Mosul, and observed that one of the vehicles in the picture appeared to be a US-made M-1 Abrams main battle tank.
I didn’t think that, at $5 million apiece, and still being fairly high-tech, the US would let gear like that out into the wild. TL;DR: I hadn’t realized how badly the warmongers in Washington have been screwing up.
The US is deploying another 560 troops to Iraq. They will be deployed wearing Birkenstocks so that there are “no boots on the ground.”