A new map of the Middle East
Link here. The wide extent of Islamic State control is scary. It is also interesting that all of the U.S. airstrikes are outside those areas. At first glance it appears that we have terrible aim and are missing our targets. It is more likely that these are areas of dispute and we are supporting Iraqi and Kurdish efforts to regain the initiative.
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Link here. The wide extent of Islamic State control is scary. It is also interesting that all of the U.S. airstrikes are outside those areas. At first glance it appears that we have terrible aim and are missing our targets. It is more likely that these are areas of dispute and we are supporting Iraqi and Kurdish efforts to regain the initiative.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Who cares? Let them have the wasteland. They had it 100 years ago and it was much better there then than it is today.
The people getting their heads cut off care.
“They had it 100 years ago and it was much better there then than it is today.”
ISIS didn’t exist back then. Not all Muslims are the same.
Actually i don’t think anyone back then ‘had it’ as you say.
Those areas have for the longest times been occupied and ruled by invaders from many lands. Including Muslims from other lands.
And Isis is the new Muslim overlords moving into the area. Killing all who do not convert to their way.
And we are in fact helping the new growing government of the Kurdish people.
A people willing to work with and be our friends.
A people willing to spend their lives and treasure keeping Isis out.
This could be one of the few Muslim nations that has fought for and gained its independence with little to no help from other nations.
A better map would be one that shows all of the areas currently battling Islamic militants across the globe.
Muslim killing muslim doesn’t break my heart. The entire problem seems to solve itself by its own logic…
They are much worse now than 100 years ago. Western involvement has failed completely and created this monster. It is time to stop feeding it. Just leave them alone and they will kill themselves. Without US weapons and US oil money they would have nothing but sand and camels. Do you own anything that has been MANUFACTURED in an arab country? Does anyone?
That is only a very temporary impression. They are at war with NATO member Turkey. I bet that the Kurds will in a few years be the new Big Satan, massacring other muslims en masse. Just like the US supported the talibans and al qaida in Afghanistan during the Soviet’s attempt to bring some kind of civilization to that country in the 1980’s, today’s support to the Kurds will backfire very very badly. They are a Middle East people. They are muslims. I.e. they are mad and dangerous! Don’t arm them. Don’t feed the monster which wants to murder you.
Over the last 1 hundred years just how would you have stopped all the “western” nations from contacting them?
How would we have kept firearms out of their hands?
How about those modern technological items like trains and radios?
Photography.
Medicine, would you really be able to keep modern medicine out of the area for over a hundred years even if they were asking for it to save their children?
What would have stopped them in the last one hundred years from selling their oil to the outside world just to finance their nations?
They would have bought everything they needed off other second and third world nations to do what they wanted. to gain what they thought they needed.
Your confusing the wants and needs of those people for the last one hundred years with the wants and needs of the few radical terrorists who want to take those nations back to the 1700’s in order to gain control of the people and to steel the resources of those people nations. All under the excuse of religion.
Even Iran is not that backwards. They are working quite hard at becoming a first world nation. A little xenophobic, yes. But working towards their future. Their young people are tired of the hate and want to become members of the outside world. the leaders see this and reluctantly are making the changes.
The next time you try to blame ‘Western influence’ please remember that often times that influence was sought out by those people for the betterment of those people. They are not the backwards rubes you think they are.
Stop with the assumption that just because you in a western nation and educated to those standards that you know whats best for any other group pf people on this planet.
That is arrogance at its worst. They are just as smart as you and know more about their situation that you do.
You were not happy trying to make your own nation an isolationist state, now you want to put guards on every other nations boarders and force them into isolationism also.
The cats out of the bag now so deal with it.
My post was in answer to Competential
“Western involvement has failed completely and created this monster. ”
This is myth. Western involvement killed a monster at the start. That was the Caliphate that even in its last years of power (1914-1918) was directing the slaughter of the Armenian people. What we are facing is people wanting to revive that monster since 1928, and those are, in spite of our mistakes, still a minority within Islam.
“Just leave them alone and they will kill themselves.”
No, as happened with the Arab refugee camps of the 1950s, when we “left them alone” and the vacuum was filled by the KGB. The Caliphate revivalists are well-funded, and can kill all Arabs who disagree with them, if “left alone” because they *are* well-funded.
The Caliphate Revivalists, whether Salafist or Khomeinist are the ones deliberately seeking to recreate an imperial monster. True Empires hold many of the freedoms needed by Industrial Society around the world anathema. The Caliphate was a Muslim copy of the Roman empire of Constantinople, and copied all its pretensions to universal rule and fusion of secular and religious rule.
Our major mistakes were in allowing the revivalists to get a hold by not opposing them throughout the 1990s, and in not demanding our own State Department follow their 2002 orders in setting up “in-exile” an Iraqi government to take power ASAP during 2003. This was because of the influence of the Sunni tyrants of the ME. They fear a Shia democratic government example even more than they fear a Persian Shia dictatorship with nuclear weapons. The majority of land with lots of oil underneath it in the ME has a Shia political majority for 50 miles around the fields. Both the House of Saud and the other Sunni tyrants near the Persian Gulf have been oppressing those Shia majorities there since the 19th century.
It was *not* inevitable that our actions would result in the present situation, and it is not inevitable that it will slag down further. Granted, the current administration has less clue about the ME than did the Clintons, and the catastrophe will likely continue till at least January of 2017.