Genocide in Iraq: the plight of the Yazidi

The New Neo Posted on by

[See updates at end of post]

Shortly after 9/11 I discovered blogs, and I remember reading a quip that caught my eye. I don’t remember who wrote it, but it went something like this: “I just realized what the problem is with the 21st century. We got the numbers mixed up. It’s not 2001, it’s 1200.”

It’s only gotten more true in the ensuing years; barbarism and religious wars have made a strong comeback—not that they’d ever really disappeared. But with the rise of ISIS we have a group giving itself over to their purest expression. Beheadings and crucifixions are part of their m.o., as well as forced conversions with the threat of death or exile looming, and now the imminent extermination of a minority religious group, the Yazidi, at ISIS’s bloody hands.

The Yazidi have one representative in Iraq’s parliament. Her name is Vian Dakhil and her recent raw cri de coeur to save her people has made her famous. The world loves a show and a dramatic story, but it no longer loves actually taking on risky rescues, and has become accustomed to relying on the Americans to do so, and the US to organize whatever help from others might be forthcoming.

Obama has changed all that. He is said to be mulling over some assistance; no doubt he is focusing like a laser on it. Forgive me for being skeptical, since he has yet to do a thing (or even speak out with any force at all) about Christians being persecuted in Muslim lands.

Nature—and geopolitics—abhors a vacuum. The deposing of bad guy Saddam Hussein left a hole that other bad guys would inevitably rush in to fill, and anyone who would cause the first had the duty to stick around at some level for at least a generation to try their best to ensure that a new group of leaders of a different ilk would be substituting for the second. I always thought our war on Iraq had to include that sort of commitment. But quite early on it became clear that, due to the efforts of the left in this country and changes in Americans’ attitude towards war, occupation, and sacrifice, we lacked the requisite commitment.

Even the Bush administration was dedicated to that purpose only halfway, and halfway measures don’t tend to do the trick. But with the surge, they seemed to finally be good enough. At the time of the handoff to Obama, things were at the point that if our new president had had the same focus as the old, ISIS would almost certainly not be here today (also, its Syrian genesis was facilitated by Obama’s disastrous policies there).

But we all know that Obama very much lacked Bush’s level of commitment, and the Islamic terrorists knew it, too, right from the start, because Obama made it crystal clear.

The one last chance to prevent disaster was that Obama might have left a very reduced American presence in Iraq under a SOFA agreement. But he made only token and empty efforts to do that, and in fact was relieved to be able to pull out entirely:

The current horror show in Iraq, including the pending extermination of the Yazidi, follows from that sequence of events. A small residual force—which Obama never wanted to leave there—would have allowed us to retain the ability to strike in a timely fashion, when ISIS was first massing and vulnerable. It would have given us a conduit to intelligence information that we now lack. It would have given us a flexibility there we don’t have.

Obama had bet that Iraq was stable enough that nothing too dramatic would flare up there during the remaining years of his administration. He bet wrong. And he’s still betting than he can dither and stall until the next crisis comes along to distract the ADD American people. And in the meantime, he’s trying to get enough illegal immigrants into this country to make it so that future votes will consist of a rubber-stamping of whatever the left wants. As for the Yazidi, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Well, the surviving Armenians do, but the Yazidi are a far smaller and more localized group. It’s possible that Obama will be roused from his non-interventionist slumber by their plight, although I tend to doubt it:

Yesterday, a senior U.S. official told me that the Obama Administration is contemplating an airlift, coé¶rdinated with the United Nations, of humanitarian supplies by C-130 transport planes to the Yazidis hiding in the Sinjar mountains. There are at least twenty thousand and perhaps as many as a hundred thousand of them, including some peshmerga militiamen providing a thin cover of protection. The U.N. has reported that dozens of children have died of thirst in the heat. ISIS controls the entrance to the mountains. Iraqi helicopters have dropped some supplies, including food and water, but the refugees are hard to find and hard to reach.

It was encouraging to learn that humanitarian supplies might be on the way, but we always seem to be at least a step behind as ISIS rolls over local forces and consolidates power. ISIS is not Al Qaeda. It operates like an army, taking territory, creating a state.

But ISIS certainly won’t be stopping with the Yazidis. Every religious and ethnic group in Iraq other than fundamentalist Sunni Muslims faces grave danger, actual and potential. Why should we care, other than for humanitarian reasons? Increasing instability in the region threatens us all, as does the rise of the strongest, most well-armed, and richest Islamist terrorist group the world has known so far. Islam has bloody borders, but in recent decades the world has shrunk, and we all know how little borders seem to mean these days.

[UPDATE 910 PM: For the past few hours, all sorts of new and highly conflicting and confusing information has been reported and then denied. Hot Air has been keeping up with things. First there was a report from the Kurds that the US had bombed ISIS, then a denial by the Obama administration, then a report that we’ve done airdrops of food to the besieged Yazidi, then a denial, then a report that the bombing was accomplished by the Iraqi air force. There’s probably more, too, but that’s what I’ve seen so far.

So basically we know very little except that something may be stirring. Whether ISIS was bombed and if so who did it is unknown. Same for airdrops. Whether the administration really hasn’t a clue or whether they are issuing denials for military strategic reasons is also unknown.

One very bad bit of news, on top of all the other bad news, is that the Kurds—long thought to be strong militarily and in terms of morale—seem to be folding in the face of ISIS.

And this report, if true, is the stuff of nightmare.]

[UPDATE 10:18 PM: Obama has announced limited, targeted airstrikes for humanitarian reasons, with caveats:

Obama said he has given the green-light to the Pentagon for the limited, targeted bombing if top military officials monitoring the shifting situation on the ground believe ISIS continues to pose a serious threat to people in the northern Kurdish-controlled region or if militants threaten U.S. servicemen and personnel in Irbil, according to a U.S. official.

Still, the president’s authorization of any airstrikes in Iraq is abrupt departure from his goal of preventing further U.S. military intervention in Iraq after ending the war there and removing all troops at the end of 2011. Obama was swept into office in 2008 in part because of his promises to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and limit U.S. military intervention abroad.

Is there any doubt that “ISIS continues to pose a serious threat to people in the northern Kurdish-controlled region”? Of course not. So that statement may have been put in there just to give Obama some wriggle room and ability to stall.

Obama included an assurance (to the left, no doubt) that we will not be drawn into another war in Iraq nor will we put any troops on the ground. ISIS will be very happy to hear those assertions. Even if Obama intends to keep such a promise, revealing it to the enemy at this point is tremendously counterproductive (just like the announcements at his presidency’s outset that he would be withdrawing from Iraq). But Obama is more intent on soothing the fears of his political base.

So it seems something may be done, but we don’t know when, what or how much. I’m glad some action is at least being strongly contemplated, but six months earlier would have been far far better. Even two weeks earlier would have been a great deal better. Obama has waited till the eleventh hour, and it’s not even clear at this point whether the bombing will actually take place. An ounce of prevention would have been worth several tons of cure, and many innocent lives would probably have been saved.]

The war on the war on women

The New Neo Posted on by

This seems like an exceptionally worthy cause:

The UP Project, which stands for “Unlocking Potential,” will seek to help Republicans win back the Senate by directly confronting Democrats and their “war on women” narrative.

But unlike other super PACs, the UP Project will not do battle on TV. Instead, the PAC will solely focus on the ground game, organizing and mobilizing grassroots networks, especially of women, that can help Republicans win the messaging battle woman-to-woman and neighbor-to-neighbor.

“We need to name and shame Democrats who play the ‘war on women’ game,” Fiorina told Breitbart News. “Too often, Republicans have allowed the label to stick because of a misguided theory that by ignoring a charge it just goes away…We need to organize strong conservative activists, especially women, and energize them to take action on behalf of our conservative principles. Women make up half this country. The UP Project is no longer going to allow Democrats to pretend we are single-issue voters.”

Do Fiorina is playing the activist game (heads up, commenter “Eric”).

Here’s the project’s website.

President Humpty

The New Neo Posted on by

This guy understands something that not all people who criticize Obama recognize: that sowing chaos and destruction was Obama’s intent.

No, not in the sense that each and every result was planned for in its details, or even its broad outlines. But the plan was for the destruction of what preceded. The resulting disorder has an excellent chance of paving the way for greater government dependence on the part of the US populace, the decline of America’s influence in the world, and a permanent Democratic majority in this country to solidify our move ever leftward. Those are the goals.

The egg is a potent metaphor. Humpty Dumpty, he who fell and was irreparably broken, was of course an egg. And you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet*, as Robespierre said. Now, there was a guy who knew something about egg-breaking. About omelet-making, not so much. But isn’t that always the way?

[NOTE: The source of this quote is sometimes given as Lenin and/or Stalin, often as Robespierre. I’m not at all sure anyone knows; maybe they all said it. They certainly all acted it out, at least the “breaking” part.]

Whatever happened to the dining room?

The New Neo Posted on by

The same thing that happened to home dining itself: it’s become increasingly rare.

I speak as a person who was raised in a house with a wood-paneled dining room, a very small kitchen, and a teeny-tiny den that was the size of a large closet. There really wasn’t much choice; we had to eat in the dining room or we’d eat standing up.

At first TV was completely banned; later it crept in when my father became ill with heart disease and didn’t have his previous energy. But the dining room remained the place my parents ate even when it was just the two of them.

After I got married, I always liked to eat in our dining room, too. My kitchen was from the 50s and didn’t have a table, and the dining room gave me a feeling that I liked and remembered from childhood—not of formality, but of family, and of a leisurely rather than a rushed meal.

Now that I’ve downsized and it’s often just me, I tend to eat in a hurry and standing up. Awful, I know. I have an open living/dining room combination though, with a dining room table that’s round in shape. I had long wanted a round table; I think it’s conducive to that warm groupiness I like, on the occasions when I do have a bunch of people over. My table (which took about a year of searching to find) has several leaves that can make it a long oval. I keep meaning to set a rule that I will sit down to that table to eat every night, but I have yet to successfully enforce it on myself more than intermittently.

If you’re kind to the cruel…

The New Neo Posted on by

…you end up being cruel to the kind.

Richard Fernandez knows this:

The world has been a ruthless place for a long time. The politically correct narrative is for the benefit of the Leftist rubes ”” strictly from hunger. The terrorists just laugh at it. If the world is ever to find peace, it needs the Sword of Justice back ”” that or God.

But the west has forgotten it.

Read Fernandez’s entire article to understand what I’m referring to here. Note, also, that there’s a certain theme to all my posts so far today: the suicidal Western tendency to criticize itself and idealize and/or excuse other cultures.

[ADDENDUM: Michael Totten on ISIS and its campaign of genocide.]

Hiroshima: 69 years ago

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The following is a slightly changed version of a post of mine. If you follow the links in the second paragraph, you’ll find three other pieces I’ve written about the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima.]

Once again it’s the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Nagasaki followed three days later, and Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945.

To date these two bombs remain—astoundingly enough, considering the nature of our oft-troubled and troubling species—the only nuclear warheads ever detonated over populated areas. (I’ve written at length on the subject of those bombs: see this, this, and this.)

Oliver Kamm wrote a while back:

Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome. The bomb was a deliverance for American troops, for prisoners and slave labourers, for those dying of hunger and maltreatment throughout the Japanese empire – and for Japan itself. One of Japan’s highest wartime officials, Kido Koichi, later testified that in his view the August surrender prevented 20 million Japanese casualties.

This context always needs to be kept in mind when evaluating any “terrible thing”—and there is no question that the dropping of these bombs was a terrible thing.

But critics who are bound and determined to portray the West as evil, marauding, bloodthirsty— whatever the dreadful adjective du jour might be—are bound and determined to either avoid all context, or to change the true context and replace it with fanciful myth. As Kamm writes, those who want to portray Hiroshima and Nagasaki as American crimes cite evidence of an imminent Japanese surrender that would have happened anyway.

Trouble is, there’s no such evidence; available information points strongly to the contrary. It’s difficult to know whether those who argue that the bombs were unnecessary and the deaths that ensued gratuitous are guilty of poor scholarship, wishful thinking, or willful lying—or perhaps some combination of these elements.

Truth in history is not easy to determine (see this), although it helps greatly if conventions of scholarship (sources, citations) are properly followed. Oh, the main events themselves are often not disputed—except for fringe groups such as those who think we didn’t go to the moon—although the details are often the subject of disagreement. But it’s the motivations behind the acts, the hearts and minds of the movers and shakers, the “what-might-have-been’s” and the “but-fors” that are so open to both partisan interpretation and willful distortion, and so deeply meaningful.

It’s hard enough to determine what happened. How many died in Dresden, for example? Do we believe Goebbels’s propaganda as promulgated by David Irving, or do we believe this work of recent exhaustive scholarship? The former “facts” have reigned now in popular opinion for quite a while, and although the latter mounts a far more convincing case, how many have read it or are familiar with the facts in it, compared to those who have been heavily exposed to the former?

There’s what happened, and then there’s why it happened—the meaning and intent behind the policy. A combination of the two is what propaganda is all about. It takes a lot of time and effort to wade through facts, make judgments about the veracity of sources, and be willing to keep an open mind.

Much easier to stand in a public square (as a bunch of nodding, smiling, waving, middle-aged peace-love Boomers regularly do in the town where I live) holding huge banners declaring “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB.” Repeat it often enough, and the hope is it will become Truth in people’s eyes.

Especially in the eyes of the young, and of future generations, who don’t have their own memories to go on. It’s much harder to convince a WWII vet that Hiroshima was an unnecessary war crime than it is to convince a young person of same; the former not only has the context, he has own personal memories of the context. But propagandists are not just interested in changing opinions in the present, they’re interested in history and the future.

[NOTE: The definitive essay on the dropping of the atomic bomb by a contemporary and a fine historian is Paul Fussell’s “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb.” And for a good discussion of all the controversy about whether Japan was thinking of surrendering prior to Hiroshima, see this. For a discussion of the idea that Russia’s entry into the war against Japan rather than the atomic bomb was the cause of Japan’s surrender, see this.]

Dana Milbank: making whites a minority will act as a corrective to flawed American culture

The New Neo Posted on by

Dana Milbank wants all you old white men to know that he understands your concerns, although he doesn’t share them. Big of him, isn’t it?

Actually, he doesn’t even understand them, as his essay proves. He thinks the concerns of those other white men have to do with race itself, and that they’re upset because, increasingly, “Whiteness has less and less to do with being American.”

No, Dana dear, they’re upset because traditional and historical American values increasingly have less and less to do with being American. You’re the one obsessed with race and ethnicity. For most people opposing increased illegal (or greatly increased legal) immigration, the problems are the following ones, and they have nothing to do with the color of the new arrivals:

(1) Letting people come here who break the law means that you’re bringing in a lot of people with no respect for law. That bodes ill for their future as law-abiding citizens.

(2) Way too many of the new arrivals are economically dependent on the welfare state, and in fact by their own admission that’s one of the main reasons they come here. That was never true in the past (especially back when there was no welfare state) and will constitute a drain on our already-stressed economy no matter whether such arrivals are white, black, green, or purple.

(3) Years ago we stopped stressing assimilation in all its important manifestations. American values have suffered as a result. Assimilation was (and still is) the key to this country’s encouraging immigration and yet continuing to be America, with its American exceptionalism intact. It’s not the race of the new arrivals that’s the problem, the problem is that their failure to assimilate is making this country more like the places from whence they came, and that’s not a good thing.

Milbank thinks otherwise. In fact, he thinks quite the opposite; he thinks it would be great if America becomes more like those places [my emphasis]:

This is not merely about a fresh labor supply but about the fresh blood needed to cure what ails us. To benefit from such a transfusion, we not only need to welcome more immigrants but also to adopt pieces of their culture lacking in our own ”” just as we have done with other (mostly European) cultures for centuries.

We need more of that Chinese collectivism instead of American individualism, says Milbank. That will save us white people from ourselves; it worked so well for the Chinese during the 20th Century. And it will also save us from the Tea Party, which “elevated extreme individualism over collective responsibilities and…tapped into nativism and further undermined trust in American institutions.”

Milbank understands neither the Tea Party nor “American institutions,” including the American attitude towards “collective responsibilities.” But for a white guy, isn’t he great? The sad thing is how many people—white and otherwise—believe Milbank’s mishmash makes sense.

Another changer, but not enough of a changer

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a change article, of sorts (hat tip: commenter “Artfldgr”).

It’s written about a woman named Nora Gold who faces a contradiction between two things she loves—Israel and leftist beliefs—and can’t figure out how to reconcile them because they are irreconcilable at this point. I write “at this point” because, early in Israel’s 20th century history, leftists were highly instrumental in the formation of that country. Read about Israel’s history of Labor Zionism and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Whether or not the two were ever actually compatible, or whether it was just a pipe dream from the start (I say the latter), they were thought to be compatible by many of the leftists/Zionists of the time. That’s why Gold, the Canadian woman who experienced the supposed left to right(ish) change the article describes, had a formative pro-Zionist experience while attending a summer camp as a girl that was run by leftists.

She has enough smarts to see that there’s a problem in reconciling her two loves, and enough integrity to not be able to dump the pro-Israel part, but she can’t bring herself to really dump the leftism part or to see the anti-Israel stance of the left as intrinsic to the left. To her, it’s just a case of puzzling anti-Semitism, come out of the blue to turn the left away from Israel.

She also knows that in the past (when she was in that socialist camp in her youth) there seemed to be no contradiction. The left loved Israel back then.

What actually happened? The Palestinians became defined as the oppressed and Israel as the oppressors. That trumped everything for the left, and it never looked back.

Nor will it, despite whatever initiatives Gold may mount to stop the left from its anti-Israel fervor and support of the movements to boycott Israel. In order to understand this, she would have to look at leftism with a more analytical eye, and she could end up experiencing a great deal more of an upheaval and change experience than she ever bargained for. Until then, she will remain in a no-man’s and no-woman’s land, betwixt and between.

Obamacare: to know it is to hate it

The New Neo Posted on by

As time goes by, the public dislikes Obamacare more and more.

The trend isn’t just with one group, it’s across the board. Democrats, Independents, and Republicans not only continue to dislike the law but increasingly dislike it. It’s true among all incomes, races, and ethnic groups. If Pelosi was right that they had to pass the law to find out what’s in it, the more Americans find out the more they don’t approve.

An interesting finding in a recent poll Kaiser poll is that personal experience with Obamacare has been bad:

Kaiser asked respondents, “So far, would you say the health care law has directly helped you and your family, directly hurt you and your family, or has it not had a direct impact?” Fifteen percent said Obamacare has directly helped them, while 28 percent said it has directly hurt them, and 56 percent said it has had no effect.

The number who said Obamacare helped them ticked up one point in the last two months, while the number who said Obamacare hurt them went up four points. And the number who were not affected went down four points. That suggests Obamacare is directly touching more and more people ”” and hurting more than it helps…

The number of people who say their opinion of Obamacare is based on their personal experience is rising ”” 23 percent in February of this year, 26 percent in June. The number who say their opinion is shaped by what they’ve learned from friends and family is also growing ”” 18 percent in February, 22 percent in June. And the number who say their opinion is based on what they see in the media is shrinking: 44 percent in February, 37 percent in June.

So more and more, people are basing their opinion of Obamacare on their own experience of those around them, and not on what they’ve seen on cable TV or heard on talk radio. And disapproval is going up.

Even for an individual who is helped personally by Obamacare in financial terms, that doesn’t mean that he/she will approve in general of the law. I wouldn’t have, even had it helped me, because I don’t make political decisions based on whether I save a buck. I try to look at the larger picture. In the case of Obamacare, the larger picture for a lot of people includes friends and relatives who have been hurt. And until now, most people haven’t been affected personally. Just wait till Obamacare starts affecting employment-based insurance more and more. Then the proverbial excrement will hit.

How California turned from red to blue

The New Neo Posted on by

Take a look at the history of red/blue politics in California, and you’ll see very graphically (in a literal sense) why Obama and company are willing to do just about anything to get more Hispanic people into the country and then give them a path to citizenship:

The Golden State has 12% of the country’s population and one third of its welfare recipients. California’s middle class is decimated. The growth of government services and regulation, together with downward pressure on wages, had the predictable outcome.

As the chart above shows, there was not a sudden population shift in California. The number of whites, who provided the bulk of the GOP vote, didn’t drop enough to explain the political outcome. Instead, there was a steady and significant increase in the legal and illegal immigrant population over several decades, a population which no amount of GOP outreach or sensitivity was going to turn into Burkeans.

That is how the Republican Party was destroyed in California, how the state plunged towards a third-world economic model, and why overall immigration needs to be reconsidered.

Big states like California and New York are now reliably blue. That makes it more and more difficult for Republicans to ever win the Electoral College. If Texas turns in the same way, it’s game over.

Things must change before we reach the tipping point. Perhaps we’ve reached it, and passed it, already.

US major general killed in “insider” attack by Afghan security

The New Neo Posted on by

The most high-ranking US military officer killed so far in Afghanistan has been murdered in a so-called insider attack by an Afghan soldier. He was not the only one who was injured in the attack, either:

Gen. Mohammmad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry, said a “terrorist in an army uniform” opened fire on both local and international troops. Azimi said the shooter had been killed and that three Afghan army officers were wounded.

A U.S. official told The Associated Press that one American soldier was killed and “about a dozen” of the wounded were Americans, but declined to comment further…

A senior U.S. military official told Fox News that one of the dead was an ISAF service member and the shooting left a “significant number of wounded, both Americans and Afghans.”

This is one of the hazards of being in Afghanistan, because it has happened before, although no American of such high rank had previously been killed. Not all of the attacks got as much press as this one has, but “in 2013, there were 16 deaths in 10 separate ‘insider’ attacks. In 2012, such attacks killed 53 coalition troops in 38 separate attacks.”

Wonderful place, Afghanistan.

Ebola here, ebola now

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m busy for the rest of the day, so I can’t write an in-depth post on the ebola news right now. But here’s a thread for discussing it. I suggest Drudge for a roundup of current articles.

I would caution people to remember that ebola is passed through body fluids, which ordinarily means close contact. However, when you have people with ebola vomiting in public, it’s hard to believe transmission to bystanders could not occur. Plus, the history of this outbreak is that medical people, even using stringent methods of protection, have been infected.

So it is worrisome that some cases seem to have come here through air travel (I’m not speaking of the two American medical personnel who were transported back to the US under strict quarantine conditions). It would seem that temporarily blocking travel from the affected countries would make sense, but that has not been done.