How to React When Your Societal World is Threatened

 

More often than not, when one finds their world under existential threats, the society under threat attempts to mollify the perceived grievances; if one were to be completely honest, something such societies are often found to be in short supply, the perceived grievance is their existence and the fact that the targeted society considers itself more enlightened and one that is superior often because it is so accommodating to the other, to almost every other even attempting to be accommodating to those who wish to supplant them. In the society under threat there will be those who will propose that the only way to survive is to be as ruthless and barbaric as those who wish to destroy everything they have. These people will be rejected and accused of being boorish brutes who are uncultured and have no ability to reason and that they are the reason the threat exists and if only they would tone down their alarmism and allow those with minds deal with the problems and find a solution where both sides get what they desire and both can then live in comfort and equality where both sides would enjoy enlightened lives in relative peace and understanding. How one is met halfway if their starting point is the eradication of one society’s way of life and entire social structure is beyond my meager intellect to compute exactly how much of the one society can be sacrificed that will allow those who are the destroyers to be satisfied that they have destroyed a sufficient amount of the other society that they are satisfied and no longer desire to destroy the entirety of the other society. Would allowing the destruction of one third do or must it be a fifty-fifty split or perhaps the others are truly energized and really hate the society and will only be satisfies with three-quarters of that society destroyed. If their intended goal is your total destructions, then guess what, only your total destruction will quench their blood lust. And this does not mean just the creature comforts and advanced luxuries and the trappings of your society, they probably also want everybody from your society dead or subjugated into servitude under their cruelest of conditions and little short of that will do to end their drive to smash everything you have built in a blood curdling frenzied lust for destruction of every last vestige of those structures and intricacies and comforts your society had afforded you.

 

There are numerous signs that such difficulties are headed your way as these things are rarely a complete surprise no matter how well you managed to ignore the signs, they were there and there were those who were screaming out warnings but the majority simply preferred to ignore the warnings and claim that this too will pass. When it is pointed out that these adversaries are talking of world conquest the majority of your society will laugh and chortle that nobody dreams of world conquest any more. Where that may be true in your all so egalitarian society where learned and studious men discuss the great moral debates of the day and all conflicts are mediated and violence is just so distasteful, world conquest went out with the two great world wars and died when the Soviet Union fell. Well, that did not end the numbers of people who dreamed of world conquest. There are still active Communist ideologues who believe in a world existing in a Communist Utopia run by, who else, them, of course. The Islamic Republic of Iran dreams of a Shiite Islamic world where all surrender before their rule and obey their edicts and nothing other than the Quran and the Sharia rule men’s lives and men rule all women’s lives and Allah rules all lives as they interpret the will of Allah and they who wear the robes and sport the longest of beards with the wild look in their eyes are to be obeyed as they are the ones who control the necks which fall before the executioners axe for the crimes of heresy. Even Kim Jong Un believes his version of Communist enslavement will eventually rule over all that remains of the world after North Korea amasses sufficient numbers of nuclear warheads and the ICBMs with which to deliver them over the entirety of the globe starting with the United States then Europe and on until he is stopped or all else have been vanquished. If you believe that there are none who believe they were chosen by heaven to rule the world you need read no further than the Hamas Charter and founding documents to realize even they believe they have been chosen by Allah to bring Sunni Islam to the world and be those who will be chosen and blessed to be in the catbird’s seat and be the ultimate deciders of everyone’s’ fates. The exact same dream is at the core of Islamic State (formerly ISIS), the Wahabbists, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Islamic State of Iran, the Saudi Royals and probably countless others some of which would surprise many people including those who thought they knew the person and never suspected they held delusional thoughts that they were destined for world conquest.

 

There are always those who will claim they did not see it coming and will be upset that nobody sounded an alarm or warned of the dangers coming. These people have a long line of predecessors. There were those who claimed that the Norsemen who had boarded their ships and gone a Viking and had already raided the eighth village up the coast and then the seventh and then the sixth and suddenly the village is all up and arguing that the Norsemen gone a Viking would tire before reaching our village and they continued to claim this and even passed laws arresting those who would sew panic by building ramparts and digging ditches to aid in defending from an invasion which these leaders kept claiming would never reach their village as they were a safe distance up the river and that would protect them. These are the same leaders who will be pushing those who had warned and even been locked away for attempting to fortify the village and were released and sent to lead the defense against the men gone a Viking as they disembarked and were heading straight for the village. There was a similar disease called disbelief in the Middle East and eastern Europe claiming that the Mongols would bypass their city as their walls were too thick, too high or that their town held too little treasure or any of a myriad of reasons but when the dead bodies of the plague victim who were still alive when the trebuchet or catapult heaved them over those very same unsurmountable obstacles defending the city and the panic struck with people screaming and crying to those same incompetent leaders to save them and the leaders hid so as not to be thrown out the gates carrying as much of the city’s wealth in a futile attempt to appease the Mongols, but alas that never worked as the Mongols wanted more than the gold and jewels, they wanted the pleasure of conquest, the blood lust of battle, and the prizes won in the pleasures of the terrified women and the subservient men groveling at their feet begging for their lives, they were the first butchered as those who stood caught in their futile attempt to stay the Mongols or who rode out in defiance choosing what could possibly be called a good death as is it not better to die on one’s feet than on one’s knees?

 

The truth is that the leaders rarely see such troubles coming and it is not because they are honestly blind to the threat but because to address such troubles would assure they would be thrown from office and they are accustomed to the comforts for as long as it will last. Leaders are not those who seek challenges except in rare instances such as Churchill who seeing the buildup of the Nazi German war machine knew what lie ahead sooner or later thus he attempted to warn the people and the leaders. Anyone remember what happened to Churchill for all the warnings he attempted to provide? No, not leading Britain during the war but before war became thrush upon an unready British Isles? He was drummed out of office being called a warmonger and an old fool and virtually every other horrific name one could heap upon a man who had simply attempted to warn a people of the coming challenge and steel them for the war that was sure to come, it was only a matter of when and to what degree the Germans would have prepared. When the Germans rolled across the remainder of Czechoslovakia they would still have been easier to defeat than after they swarmed across half of Poland and sealed their eastern border with a treaty with an anxious Stalin who was not prepared for a war with Germany. Churchill’s final verbal fusillade to his noble members of the British Parliament after Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich pact with Herr Hitler which was straight forward, to the point and true as he told them, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” There was far more indelible historical record of a man choosing the path of honor when those around him chose to ignore the threat and whose words are familiar to any student of ancient history or the study of war where the two famous quotes came at the shores of Thermopylae. When the Persian officer stood before the three-hundred Spartans and three to five thousand assorted Greek volunteers and demanded that King Leonidas and his men give up their arms and they would be allowed to live, his reply was simply, he exclaimed disdainfully and grinning without a doubt, “Molon Labe” or, “Come and take them.” Also, when Dienekes, a Spartan soldier, was informed that the “Persians would fire arrows so numerous as to block out the sun,” his reply reflected the bravado of his King stating, “So much the better as then we shall fight our battle in the shade.”

 

Molon Labe When Demanded the Greek Spartans Surrender Their Arms King Leonidas Replied Molo Labe __ Come and Take Them

 

 

In this day there are very few who have the metal or bravado of King Leonidas or Winston Churchill though there are a few and one is also a great friend and supporter of Israel as praises her efforts and survival as being on the front line in the generational clash of civilizations which too many throughout the western world are in complete denial that there be such a problem and the real problem is their leader in the White House. The gentleman in question is retired Lieutenant Colonel and former United States Congressman Allen West who can be heard from his recent Times Square Speech below.

 

After these quotes from some of the bravest of men to have ever lived and after hearing a man who did everything to protect his men in Iraq even to the point where he committed an act that he knew as he did so that it would likely cost him his career if the commanders above him did not stand behind him, they did not. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West commanded the 4th Infantry Division in Iraq where he was losing men to IED (improvised explosive device), which work a lot like mines, at a rate he knew was unsustainable and starting to affect morale. One of the terrorists responsible for these devices and who Lieutenant Colonel Allen West knew had knowledge of where his men would be ambushed with an IED and the location of those making the explosive devices but he refused to respond to his interrogators. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West entered the interrogation tent and ordered everybody out of the tent leaving him alone with the captured terrorist where Allen West decided to try a new form of special interrogation and took his sidearm from its holster and raked a round into the chamber and discharged a round into a sand-bucket used to assure that weapons were not loaded during interrogations. The terrorist decided that he would rather not test Lieutenant Colonel Allen West’s patience further and provided all the information desired. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West returned to his office and called his superior and informed him of his actions. He then calmly briefed his commanders and they devised tactics and actions for the next day. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West in very short order was relinquishing his sidearm and his command and was soon forced from the service after twenty-two years’ service. He will always have the respect of his men and many other patriots and some, myself included, would follow him in an assault on hades if that were necessary. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West was elected to the United States Congress in Florida but when his district was joined into another with the advice of his own party, he lost a clearly rigged primary as he was not what one might call a party man who could be counted upon to vote the party line as he only would vote his conscience, and we cannot have such people in Congress as what might come next, integrity?

 

As any of the heroes from above would have advised, when somebody claims over and over year in and year out that their primary aim is to kill you and destroy your way of life that only fools and politicians refuse to believe their threats. Iran has been chanting for over thirty-five years, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” and they continue to do so every Friday rain or shine. Despite that the political leaders in too many parties and places claim that these chants are made for domestic consumption and the Ayatollahs would never make good on these threats as they realize that by doing so they would be inviting their nation’s destruction. In all honesty, they will eventually try to make good on these threats and the deal recently reached set the clock ticking down to the inevitable date when they will finally have the ability to fully follow through on these threats. As Lieutenant Colonel Allen West stated, in the near future the deal just made by President Obama will make Iran an economic power and within five to ten years they will become a military power and between ten to fifteen years they will become a nuclear power and beyond that all bets are off and both Israel and the United States will be facing an Iranian monster capable of fulfilling those threats. Does the western world really desire playing Russian Roulette with Iran because if they do, I have news for them, they will be going first and in this game Iran is insisting they use an .45 cal. semi-automatic pistol which makes going first a guaranteed losing proposition. But still there are those in the western world who will be eager to join the Ayatollahs at the table and pick up that weapon and the obvious will result and the Ayatollahs will gladly continue to load one bullet into the .45 cal. semi-automatic pistol and handing it to their adversary from the west and allowing them the privilege of going first. If the leaders are as big the fools as many we have currently, they will gladly oblige. Unfortunately they will be taking all too many of us with them, so choose your votes carefully as your life does depend upon this.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Iran Desires Some Things Even the Saudis Cannot Buy

 

Saudi Arabia is used to facing problems for where the determining factor is oil or money. The current crisis is not one of that ilk. It is not one that can be done completely just by controlling the price of oil as doing that might upset Russia, the Saudi’s recent new best friend after the United States proved unreliable and apparently had joined the Iranians whose immediate plan is to take the Saudi oil fields thus neutering the Saudi influence and taking away their only real weapon. But the apparent newest friend of the United States has far more than taking merely oil, they want it all and the Saudis had best know about the other half of the Iranian plans, the half where they take the most valuable of the Saudi influences. The oil is only money and that can be taken back with force even if doing so heavily damages the fields as that too can be easily repaired and the Iranians do not wish to become merely the all but sole power over OPEC and thus be able to push the price of oil up or down according to their whims. But the oil fields, as such, are not even the primary goal because the Iranians have as their primary appetite which is to control Islam, something they find to be the more appealing and possessing a far more important goal requiring their attentions and that is to have the holy cities starting with Mecca and Medina. Some here believe that their backing of the Houthis to take control of Yemen is less about controlling the Bab el Mandeb Straights and more about providing them with a more direct route in reaching Mecca and Medina coming from the south which is often the least guarded area of Saudi Arabia and once the Iranians get past those tasked with guarding the southern borders it would become a three party race to control the holy cities, two being the Iranians closing from Yemen in the south and from Iraq in the north while the Saudi forces would need to be called from their concentration on the oil fields and transported the width of the country to join the fight. This lends to my answering those who have asked about what made me believe that World War III was on the horizon and this is my reply and explanation.

 

Once Iran controls the oil fields and both Mecca and Medina, and thus adding to the Shiite holy sites in Iran and in Iraq where their efforts will be directed in defending those near Islamic State borders or already swallowed by the Islamic State thus requiring liberation they can move to their next challenge. With their control over Mecca and Medina added to Damascus, Najaf, in Iraq with Qom in Iran they can then fortify any other Shiite holy places in Iraq from the ravages of the Islamic State and work towards returning Damascus and all of Syria which at the moment appears more like a pressing and difficult problem. Should the situation turn for the worst, as it appears that the Syrian and Hezballah forces are losing badly in Syria, Iran will need to interject some serious forces to reacquire all of Syria thus rejoining these lands with Iraq and thus attaining a direct land route for resupply. This will require the removal of Islamic State from their holdings and that may prove to be a most difficult task. None of these tasks are dependent on the Iranian production of nuclear weapons as those weapons can only be utilized in places which possess no natural or religiously important sites as such sites becoming uninhabitable due to radiation would defeat gaining their control. Taking out the Islamic State resources in open areas of lesser importance would be the perfect locations for tactical nuclear intervention providing breaking the treaty just negotiated would not prove advantageous as it would give the next President of the United States the perfect excuse to interfere with Iranian immediate plans to take control of the most prized and sensitive locations in all of Islam.

 

Fortunately for Israel and the United States these goals are more likely the primary goals for Iran as their gaining preeminence in the Muslim world and the display of Shia Islam as ascending and Sunni Islam as the weak and decrepit old and stale form of Islam would serve them well in converting the majority of Sunni adherents to Shiite doctrines. The fact that once the Iranians had defeated Saudi Arabia or at least gained the vital parts of the oil fields of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia along with Mecca and Medina they could then set to establishing Madrassa throughout the Islamic and Western worlds replacing the Wahhabi schools and other centers with Shia schools and centers and will go a long way towards this goal. There are two other obstacles which Iran will need to overcome, Turkey and Egypt, both of which are well armed and have well trained militaries and will each pose their own necessary problems for the Iranians to address. Many might claim that the Kurds would also pose a problem but oddly enough, there are scenarios in which they could become allies if their ends were also considered. Should the Iranians prove to be the chess players they were at the P5+1 nuclear talks, not that President Obama desired to present any bit the real defender of the realm and actually desired to provide Iran with a perfectly clean route to nuclear weapons even to go so far as to provide United States assistance in designing the ultimate in centrifuges and potentially the actual plans, methods and procurement of equipment for the entire production of thermonuclear warheads and setting up multiple sites dispersed around Iran in German designed and build bunkers for their continued safety and Secretary Kerry as the clown at the talks being advised and encouraged all the while to simply give in at any sign of resistance and to make the demands in such a plaintive, diminutive and weak tone as to invite refusals, what could possibly go wrong as long as the American people were never aroused the plan would work, and it functioned like clockwork they will parley these gifts into further gains.

 

So, once Iran has cemented their control over the Arabian Peninsula, and the Shiite crescent through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, the next two nuts to crack are Turkey and Egypt. Turkey can be defeated quickest and with minimal efforts providing they decide not to simply bow to Iranian hegemony and take the refusal to their retaining independence and instead becoming a semiautonomous district subject to the whims and necessities of Tehran, then Turkey will have been neutered and the Kurds circumvented and thus left alone for the time being as their threat is minimal as all they desire, much like Israel, is their little corner of the world and they will be content ad happy. Unfortunately for the people of Turkey, I do not see Erdogan capitulating and to subside his rule to Tehran which would make him an enemy. The best tactic for invading Turkey would be to seek the aid of the Kurds under the promise of granting them the eastern quarter of Turkey and the lands they already control even including Mosul as an autonomous region loyal to Iran. As long as the Iranians remain loyal to their promises the Kurds would do similarly. This would leave Egypt as the sole roadblock to hegemonic establishment of the Caliphate as the rest of North Africa would readily fall to Iran. There is no easy way to take Egypt but she could be weakened severely just by the loss of the Sinai Peninsula and grabbing control of the two ends of the Suez Canal thus taking from Egypt a major revenue source. Probably the best manner of taking Egypt is from within and by establishing Shia Islam as dominant and thus having them desire to join the strong and growing in power Iranians who are the true leaders of Islam and the emerging Caliphate.

 

After Egypt the goal changes immensely and the impossible must be considered, well, the impossible from the erudite scholars in the West, nobody told the Iranian or the Arab worlds that such was considered beyond acceptable, the seeking to conquer the entire world and willing to do whatever it takes and destroy half the world simply to rule the remainder. The United States has always practiced capture and release policy starting in the twentieth century and this molded their concept that any one nation conquering the world was out of the question. Europe, as we have seen, would be happy to unite Europe and have it ruled by a council of the nations and somehow find some formula that equalized Germany and Greece and the two completely foreign to each other lifestyles. Europe, in its self-imposed demilitarized European theater would pose little opposition should their Islamic populations approach thirty percent and decide that Europe should be required to join the Caliphate as the real and unadulterated authoritative force in the world. It is entirely possible that should there be rioting and mayhem with hundreds if not thousands murdered in the uprising that the European Union would desire quiet to such an extent as to capitulate and then the nations would call for a meeting of NATO and it is quite possible that most of NATO would claim their desire to join the Caliphate and desire all of NATO to simply recognize that this was the future of the world. The United States and possibly some of the eastern European nations would oppose such and NATO would effectively be dissolved allowing the majority of NATO nations and European Union nations would just surrender to Islam without a fight, the preferred method by the rulers of the Caliphate.

 

 

Could this be an Iranian Caliphate resulting from the concessions all are making in the here and now and their hungers being satiated by a weakened and war weary Western World, especially Europe and leftists in America?

 

 

At some point the remaining European powers, probably Poland and England and a few of the former Warsaw Pact nations resisting and uniting with the United States, and oddly enough, with China and Russia all unite in order to fight to prevent what they finally recognized was an actual intent to rule the entire globe. The unthinkable would finally begin to be realized that nobody had informed the Iranians that conquest of the world was an undesirable goal and totally unacceptable by what was formerly the civilized Western World. The problem is that only the Western World had ever adopted that concept. Unimaginable as it would be to think so, but even Kim Jong Un probably envisioned a world being ruled by him or one of his progeny. The remaining powers somehow included Israel, which had lost Tel Aviv to the Iranian hope that one bomb would end Israel. Instead that one bomb just steeled their steadfastness and lighted the resolve of one third of American Jewry who made Aliyah bringing with them their wealth, all under an emergency plan by Israel’s government calling for all Jews to male Aliyah immediately. This was stated to be the rallying for the safety of Israel and Jerusalem. This swelled the Jewish population even after the loss of almost two-million souls when Tel Aviv was struck; the Israeli Jewish population reached an unthinkable eleven-million Jews. This in-swelling of the Jews from around the world was seen by many younger Arab Islamists as a sign for them to move across the Jordan River and join with the Caliphate which had absorbed Jordan in a three day blitz. The Jordanian King was able to get his family inside Israel along with many of the ruling elites who desired the relative safety of Israel than to face the often unpredictable dictates of the Shia conquerors. Israel offered safety and provided an escape to the United States where they all took up residence in the Napa Valley and spent their days sipping wine on the various tours of the vineyards.

 

The alliance of Britain, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Russia, China, a number of other smaller former Soviet satellites and miraculously, Israel joined forces to end the rise of the Caliphate once and for all. It is inevitable given the divisions in this world which have irreconcilable differences and completely opposing philosophic views and precepts, the clash between the two once the weaker, Islam, could be united against the currently still stronger United States and the British commonwealth nations which includes Canada, Australia, the British Isles, Ireland (though they would deny it till the end), United States, India, New Zealand, and a few I probably missed, would band together in a response to any threat against a single state, especially if that threat was aimed at London and Ten Downing Street and Buckingham Palace as the world knows, there are but five Queens in this world and there are near countless versions of four and one stands apart. They are the Queen of Hearts, Queen of Clubs, Queen of Spades, and Queen of Diamonds and above them all is the Queen of England. That will be the next and hopefully final world war though I have my doubts about last. Let us pray that the deal struck with Iran does not make that final World War the one told of by Albert Einstein in the answer he presumably gave when asked what weapons World War III would be fought with and he replied “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Life, Iran, ISIS, Our Fates, and an Unknown Future

 

One need remember that Iran and Iraq went at each other for a period just short of eight years starting on September 22, 1980 and lasting until August 20, 1988 and was initiated by Saddam Hussein and was largely considered to have been a failure by Iraq as Iran stopped the initial surge dead in its tracks and slowly but inexorably backed the Iraqi troops back and they eventually returned to their initial borders. This was just a part of the history of animosities between Iraq and Iran and was seemingly inevitable that they would go after one another. The fact that it was Saddam Hussein who began the hostilities was not so surprising and he may have even been nudged in that direction by the United States who still harbored great animosity towards the Iranians for the hostage crisis which was yet to have concluded. The United States hostages were not released until after the November Presidential elections on the very hour that President Reagan was sworn in to office. One might be able to claim that the hostage release coinciding with the swearing in of Ronald Reagan might make their release his very first accomplishment as President as few would even think to claim they were released as a sign of respect and a parting gift for President Jimmy Carter. The fact that the war between the secular dictatorial forces of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Shiite Muslim Sharia Iranian State of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini fought to a virtual standstill exchanging the same patches of ground as the fates ebbed and flowed neither capable of delivering a decisive blow that might make the other reel and collapse before a superior force. This was, in many ways, a conflict where despite governments picking sides, some places such as Israel was simply glad that the war kept both nations occupied and facing some fire situation which left them so preoccupied that they had little time to think about harming Israel, something else where these two nations might have also competed to see which could injure Israel the most.

 

Two years, less a mere eighteen days, Iraq decided to invade another neighbor, this time Kuwait. Starting on August 2, 1990 it took a mere two days to August 4, 1990 for Saddam Hussein’s army to sweep across Kuwait. This not only caused Iran to worry that another attack might be in the cards from their nemesis, it also made Saudi Arabia extremely nervous about the possibility that Saddam Hussein might have them in his sights as his next victim. Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz called his good and close friend, President George Herbert Walker Bush and the wheels were put in motion to ride to the rescue. The United States formed a coalition which included a number of Arab and Muslim States which worked under United Nations approval and removed Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait destroying a huge number of the Iraqi armored vehicles including numerous Russian supplied tanks and armored personnel carriers plus scores of trucks and other vehicles. The Iraqi troops caused an unmitigated ecological disaster by setting virtually, if not every, oil well in the Kuwaiti vast oil fields. It took months to extinguish and recap every well and then proceed to put them back into service. Things actually appeared to have settled down in the threats between nations, but that did not mean all was well in the Middle East. Acting on what was interpreted to be United States urgings the Iraqi Shiites in the south and the Kurds in the North made an attempt to dethrone Saddam Hussein expecting the United States to provide some level of assistance. Well, United States assistance was never considered being sent as they had refused to even chase the Iraqi troops back to Baghdad after chasing them from Kuwait. The closest the United States manpower came to Iran was protecting the Americans working in the Kuwaiti oil fields putting out well fires and recapping wells before returning them to service, a task that took several years.

 

After the 9/11 terror attacks on the twin Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon and another target foiled by the passengers of Flight 93 which they brought down at the cost of their own lives before it could reach its intended target which was believed to have been either the Capital building or the White House and the beginning of the war on terror with the invasions of Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden and fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban, President George W. Bush requested further authorization to take military action against Saddam Hussein in order to prevent his further manufacture of chemical weapons and to terminate his reputed nuclear weapons program. The alleged nuclear weapons program had been backed by all evidence gathered by the British, the United States, France and the rest of Europe all indicated that Saddam Hussein an advanced nuclear weapons program which could have been completed except for the Israeli attack destroying the French built Osirak Reactor before it could be fueled and used to produce plutonium for a weapon. There is the common misconception that there was none of the precursors for a nuclear weapons program to be found in Iraq during the Second Gulf War. There was a large amount of Yellowcake, a form of raw uranium used for safe transport and storage and can be transformed into uranium hexafluoride which is what is fed into the centrifuges in order to enrich the uranium. Whereas these approximately five-hundred-fifty-tons of yellowcake, that is over one-million-pounds, were from the stores logged back in 1991 and was under the watchful eyes of the IAEA, that does not mean it was impossible for those stores to be utilized to jumpstart Saddam’s dream to attain nuclear weapons had he decided to demand that the IAEA inspectors leave Iraq and then gone full speed ahead in a mad dash towards making a weapon. North Korea has stores of yellowcake which under IAEA guards until it was not under IAEA guards. Granted it might have been difficult to get the yellowcake into production before the world arrived, as they arrived despite Saddam not touching those provisions as there were suspicions backed by faulty intelligence.

 

Now Saddam Hussein is long gone and Iran has all but annexed the southern third of Iraq, the Shiite controlled area that includes the capital city of Baghdad. The Kurdish has become an entity unto themselves and definitely has autonomy if not complete independence. The Iraqi government, which appears to be weak and feckless with Iran holding the real power but only in the southern third of the nation even partially cemented under their control, has thus far refused to provide any weapons or other provisions to reach either the Kurdish militias or the Sunni tribesmen thus leaving both to their own devices in fighting against such forces such as ISIS which has been marauding and murdering anybody who does not meet their high standards for Islamic purity. This fighting has mostly taken place in the Sunni central area of what has been Iraq and that has left the Sunni stuck between two murderous powers. The Shiite military from the south performs ethnic cleansing whenever they gain sufficient areas to conduct sweeps. It appears that the main people targeted are Sunni males of fighting age. When ISIS takes control of these same areas they too pick the same group and demand that they prove their devotion to Islam by joining the new Caliphate or else suffer the wrath of the true believers. They also threaten the families of these young and middle aged men most of whom just want to be left alone to tend to making a living and caring for their families. ISIS does not care if they are fathers raising a family with young children as they are true warriors for the faith and because their cause is pure, they themselves are pure as are their acts, thus their cause is righteous. This makes their courts just, their drafting of all able-bodied men of fighting age, willingly or not, righteous, their taking of supplies such as food, even if it deprives the people of proper means, is just and all they do and how they go about performing their actions are righteous. Their being holy warriors make anybody opposing their cause or placing themselves contrary to their demands acts of blasphemy. This is why they have been holding public executions and quick trials followed by swift execution of their judgement and the sentence. ISIS has been proving to be a force on the ground with which to contend. Should they ever manage to procure an air force of any size and with even the barest minimum of competence, then ISIS will have the potential to have become at the least an entity possessing the barest minimum for being a nation in the Middle East, at least as a replacement in some ways for Syria.

 

What will add significantly to the range and broaden the abilities of ISIS would be their gaining the backing of al-Qaeda, something they appear to have been doing piecemeal thus far as one former entity which had sworn their fealty to al-Qaeda are now switching and swearing fealty to ISIS such as Boko Haram. The recent threats made by ISIS may end up spelling their demise as they may be biting off more than they can chew. Their threats to replace the Arab Palestinian Authority actually make complete sense as they are two opposing sides of the forces against Israel. Where ISIS are Islamists who follow a strict interpretation of the Quran which defines their form of the Sharia, the Arab Palestinian Authority are secularist, socialist with a small semblance of democratic principles as long as such does not threaten those in the highest places. The Arab Palestinian Authority represent the most vile and far removed form of Islamic governance that one can find, they are oil and water, or more likely pure sodium and water. Hamas, on the other hand, has a very similar charter stand for the same world conquest and placing all of the world’s people under the banner of Sunni Islam by whatever means necessary. As Hamas and Islamic Jihad might have a better than average probability of joining ISIS as a whole entity and thus giving ISIS additional manpower which has already been tested in combat. The statement made by ISIS which could prove their taking on a nut they are unable to crack was their threat to also tackle Israel. The IDF would not need to hold back fighting ISIS as they habitually have been forced into doing with every possible entity watching their every move just waiting to pounce should Israel operate without the strictest of restraints almost requesting permission to return fire when her troops come under fire. The probability that ISIS will open up a new front within its current operating theater would be tactical suicide. Currently ISIS has three fronts, their borders with the Kurdish Peshmerga Militias who are well trained and disciplined holding the northern front in Iraq and the northeastern front in Syria, the Alawites are holed up with their backs against the Mediterranean Sea in the northwest rim of Syria, IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the remnants of the Iraqi Army in the south of Iraq and the entirety of their eastern front is the rest of the Iranian armed forces should they push in an eastern and there have been hints dropped this week that President Erdogan has made intonations that Turkey is considering moving down into Syria to scoop up as much of the lands as they are able and that would place another front for ISIS to face off against and of course ISIS has mentioned their desire to take control over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina which would involve a war with Saudi Arabia which would also bring the Egyptians into the fray. ISIS has one service they are providing the world at this stage, they are breaking apart the Iranian crescent by destroying Bashir al-Assad and breaking the direct link from Tehran through Baghdad on through Damascus and through to Beirut or Latakia, Baniyas, Sidon, Tartus, or Tyre and then out into the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. ISIS is a horrific and barbaric entity on the order of something like a Saddam Hussein who gassed thousands of his own countrymen. Saddam Hussein rivaled Hafez al-Assad, the man who had murdered more Syrian people than any enemy until his son, Bashir al-Assad, became what appears to be the last president who may have set the bar to such a height for percentage of one’s nation either murdered, rendered without shelter, made into refugees, fled the nation or been imprisoned or simply disappeared without a trace. For the sake of the Western World it would be to their advantage for ISIS to engage fully with Iran preventing them the peaceful times which would allow them to pursue their nuclear weapons program to its completion including the ICBM missiles which could easily reach anywhere on earth. Maybe it is the fate of ISIS to foil the plans and progresses of the Iranians as United States President evidently will not go so. So, once again we find that silver lining within one of our darkest of clouds. Still, how long will we live with a world where we have to rely on scoundrels to do the work of an elected charlatan?

 

Beyond the Cusp