What sort of self serving empire building/apologia rubbish is this? The rise of Sunni extremism is directly related to the role successive US regimes and their (intended and chaotic) interference in the ME. Divide and conquer tactics are empire favourites. The US along with the Saudi's and Qatar have pumped weapons fighters and ideology for decades into the region for political outcomes and have used essentially the same people in Libya, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq – and that's just for starters.

The West could not lie straight in bed. They invaded Iraq for oil and now need to go back to secure it. Dr Paul Craig Roberts is the ex-assistant secretary to the US Treasury and he knows the truth. The USA and Israel have us a path of nuclear war with Russia and China.http://usawatchdog.com/threat-of-nuclear-war-back-paul-craig-roberts/

mdelmege and Arjay

After some anti-Western, anti-humanitarian articles on Iraq have featured on OLO the record needed to be set straight.

It is not the West, not oil, not banks (Arjay) and not the US that is the problem its the livestyle, traditions and hatreds of the Middle East.

We don't want such self-justifying hatreds to infect Australia.

So where do you stand on ISIS?

Unfortunately, the author of this article, like so much in the msm, has a grasp of history and the facts that could be summarised on the back of a postage stamp.

What is happening in syria and Iraq fits perfectly with the Yinon Plan of an Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates. The americans only attacked ISIS when the latter threatened the Kurdish area of Iraq. Iraqi Kurdistan is friendly with Israel and supplies Israel with part of its oil needs.

According to French sources, al Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, is in fact Simon Elliott, a Mossad operative with Jewish parentage. That may be one reason why ISIS has yet to attack a single Israeli target. According to Jordanian sources, ISIS forces were trained by the US at Jordanian bases. Their main source of finance appears to be Saudi Arabia, whose pernicious form of Islamic fundamentalism poisons the Muslim well around the world. Yet Saudi Arabia completely escapes US condemnation. That in turn owes much to the deal Kissinger negotiated in the early 1970s to (a) quadruple the price of oil; and (b) ensure that the petrodollar was the sole currency of oil trading.

We now have the beginnings of a breakdown in that cozy arrangement which has subsidised much US adventurism around the world. It is not a coincidence that the emergence of the BRICS development bank, and the enlargement of the SCO, and major developments in the Eurasian region have been accompanied by hysterical anti-Russian and anti-Chinese rhetoric. As for Mr Coates' characterisation of the Ukraine conflict, it is simply pathetic and needs a systematic rebuttal of its own.

James O'Neill

While your brain-mass wouldn't topple off a pinhead, let alone a postage stamp, you may have a point that al Baghdadi is, in fact, an Islamic businessman at heart.

An article of 23 June 2014 puts a whole corporate perspective on ISIS - upsetting previous assumptions that ISIS was mainly funded by such Sunni countries as Saudi Arabia.

The article indicates http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/06/23/231223/records-show-how-iraqi-extremists.html that:

ISIS sprang up from a largely self-funded, corporation-style prototype by the time al Baghdadi assumed command in 2010.

"Baghdadi inherited...a sophisticated bureaucracy that was almost obsessive about record-keeping. [where ISIS] middle-managers...list expenditures in neat Excel spreadsheets... Income from [ISIS] looting of Shiite Muslim-owned property was recorded as “spoils.”

[ISIS] even had begun siphoning a share of Iraq’s oil wealth, opening gas stations in the north, smuggling oil and extorting money from industry contractors".

So yes Baghdadi's ISIS may well be an Islamic money-making concern that just uses young men as pawns to be martyred.

The question of the US airstrikes is in response to Iraq government's request and as such does not mirror the invasion of Iraq under George W Bush Jr. The troubles do however stem from the invasion and the formation of the new government. With the formation of the government the Sunni were ignored and at times persecuted for their religious beliefs. The US acted in response to the actions of a terrorist act that in some ways is associated with the Sunni movement. It is to protect the citizens under attack from the ISIS and they and other states have provided humanitarian aid. This action does fit under the Responsibility to Protect and as such it can be conceived that the US and other states acted under a UN principles.

Hi romingfree

Thanks for your comments. Notwithstanding Bush's 2003 invasion Iraq was already thoroughly unstable and cruel to its own people under the Sunni dominated government of Saddam Hussein.

People totally forget that under Saddam Iraq forght an opportunistic war against Iran from 1980 to 1988 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War in which around a million people died.

Two years later Iraq invaded a defenceless Kuwait for Kuwait's oil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Kuwait .

Saddam meanwhile slaughtered Kurds and Shiites in many cases with poison gas against children.

What this means is that Iraq, left to itself was a warring, unstable, inhumane place that attacked neighboring countries before 2003. Whether the 2003 invasion made this dire situation worse is impossible to say.

Obama, to his credit, is reluctant to embroil the US in other countries' wars, but countries need to take a stand against the slaughter of innocents by ISIS in Iraq.

Preventing this slaughter may be the prime reason for the US re-intervention over the last few days. However the US would also have had foreknowledge about long-term Iraqi leader and Shiite Prime Minister Maliki's intention, 2 days ago, to launch a coup against the newly installed Iraqi President Fuad Masum who is a Kurd.

The US re-intervention then is partly to shore up the Kurds compromise position against the warring Sunni-Shiite opponents in Iraq. More Kurd power in Baghdad is preferable to the Shiite vs Sunni warring that has produced ISIS.

Regards

Pete

Too little, Too late.

We in Australia cannot expect more than this half-hearted American response should we find ourselves in a similar trouble - that's why we need to prepare and have our own nukes and biological weapons, just in case and just so we no longer need to bow to American dictates. Only having a good stock of this kind of weapons will assure that we will never need to actually use them.

Pete, where do I stand on ISIS? Some think they are a Western invention to give the USA an excuse to take control of more of Iraq's oil. Don't forget Gazprom and China have oil interests there too. Dr Paul Craig Roberts thinks that ISIS are a natural Muslim movement which is reacting to Western aggression. ISIS have come from nowhere with a lot of funds and weapons. I think they are a Western creation just like Al Qaeda.

Pete your personal attacks on James O'Neill demonstrates your desperation.

Dear Arjay,

Who cares HOW ISIS was created? The beast is now out of the bottle and do you think that if nothing is done about it, it will stop at Australian shores?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/bombing-iraq-for-u-s-oil-companies/5395527 This article supports my theory about the oil. ISIS it seems has got out of US control and if they take the Kurdish oil their power will be much greater. The Kurds are the 9th biggest oil producers on the planet.

Iraq was always about the oil.

Hi Yuyutsu

I agree that Australia will need nuclear weapons because we are too distant from the US to rely on the US nuclear umbrella forever. Also the US might cede the East Asian region to China one day, when China becomes a more powerful superpower than the US.

We still need a nuclear delivery system and countries are increasingly turning to submarine launched ballistic missiles. Israel may have mounted such missiles in its Dolphin subs. Preferably Australia should acquire nuclear propelled subs as missile platforms. The Virginia class nuclear subs which the US has offered to Australia would be ideal. Australia needs to develop a nuclear industry to support such submarines and build nuclear weapons.
---

Hi Arjay

I responded to James O'Neill because he stooped so low as to be personally insulting on this thread at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16584#290280 .
Naturally I'll ignore him from now on, noting that he is unable to write articles himself.

Have you explored the possibility that ISIS might be the creation of Sunni monied interests?

Regards

Pete

Pete

If we had nuclear weapons how would we stop the naval, infantry and armoured forces of a similarly armed nuclear power?

Dear Is Mise,

<<If we had nuclear weapons how would we stop the naval, infantry and armoured forces of a similarly armed nuclear power?>>

Tactical neutron bombs can be useful against an invading fleet.

Also, by knowing that if they bring us to where we have nothing to lose then their cities will be erased, or better, their families at home will become ill and die of the plague: those who DO have something to lose will have to think again.

A useful device is the statistical bomb, setting it up so if we are attacked than there will be an automatic, non-human response at a certain probability, creating events which neither us nor them can predict in advance.

For example, when we are attacked, Australians could be fitted with electronic devices, most of them would do nothing, but a few would trigger a nuclear/biological response if the person carrying them dies (heart-beat stops), where neither the carriers nor the enemy can tell who carries the trigger devices.

Actually Pete, I was critical of the fact that the article was singularly lacking in its knowledge of geo-political realities. It is a condition common to the msm. One hopes for better from the so-called alternative media. The appalling coverage of MH17 and Ukraine (conspicuously missing from OLO) is another glaring example.

That of course didn't stop you from indulging in gratuitous personal insults ("brain mass wouldn't topple off a pinhead") misrepresentation ("al-Bagdadi is an Islamist business man at heart") when nothing I said could be remotely construed in that way. This is followed (12/8 at 3.07pm) by further wilful ignorance about Iraq's war with Iran and the invasion of Kuwait.
You then claim (12/8 at 10.52pm) that I am "unable to write articles" myself. You are presumably referring to my not writing for OLO, as I have published two academic books, numerous articles in peer reviewed journals, many academic conference papers, and countless other articles in various places.

I do not write for OLO because it is (a) not interested in my views of the world; and (b) with a few honourable exceptions the people who comment on the articles do not, to put it politely, add to the sum of human knowledge or even make a useful contribution to the discussion.

If you are interested in actually understanding the world we live in, rather than indulging in nuclear weapon fantasies, read Mike Whitney's latest contribution (12/08/14) in Counterpunch entitled "My Money's on Putin". More wisdom, common sense and knowledge than you are ever going to read in our pathetic media. But be warned: contains ideas that challenge your obvious comfort zone.

‘morning Peter,

This thread was always going to end in tears. So many have invested so much in the ideological narrative that the last nations into the ME are to blame, namely the coalition of the willing. It is so easy to dismiss thousands of years of invasion and occupation in order to blame the US and its allies. Yet we are now hearing increased demands for intervention by the west to protect the victims once again.

OLO has previously canvassed the potential for disengagement by the west in ME affairs. I personally feel this has some merit, particularly in sending a clear message to the rest of the many very wealthy, well resourced and well armed “Arabic Nations” that it’s now “their” turn to solve “their” problems. They can raise a collective army of 600,000 to attack Israel (1948 and 1967), but can’t be arsed to tidy up their own back yard.

For those who still believe that western military intervention in the ME was about oil, it is worth noting the current oil prices, hedge funds and gold prices throughout the recent ME turmoil.

“Total US recoverable natural gas resources (includes conventional, unconventional in lower 48, Alaska and offshore) totals 4.244 quadrillion cubic feet according to the Institute for Energy Research: Enough natural gas to meet US electricity demand for 575 years at current fuel demand for generation levels - Enough natural gas to fuel homes heated by natural gas in the United States for 857 years - More natural gas than Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan combined. Plus: The US has three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia in shale oil”. --Gary Hunt.

Truth is malleable, like this gem from James O’Neil. << Unfortunately, the author of this article, like so much in the msm, has a grasp of history and the facts that could be summarised on the back of a postage stamp >>.

So are we going to hear about whose history and facts we are going to rely on James? Yours I would guess?

Also Is Mise

I also support Yuyutsu's calls for Australian nuclear weapons for peace (force de roo). At present leftwing students all over the world (and especially in Melbourne) are pressing for the benefits of mutually assured destruction (MAD).

These spontaneously fissioning, and may I say cheap, weapons are fundamentally for DETERRENCE with actual use being (almost) unthinkable for Australia and its erstwhile enemies (New Zealand, Tasmania and of course East Timor).

Think about it. If we armed ourselves with an independent nuclear deterrent, like Israel and France (force de frappe) it would cost a mere 10% of our GDP for 15 years.

More than a bargain for all Australians and a nuclear weapons industry to solve South Australia's job problem. The test range may course some initial soul searching but there is a guaranteed 20km exclusion zone from Byron Bay.

After all - our uranium trade shouldn't underwrite China's nuclear weapons program exclusively.

Yours

Pete

Hi James O'Neill

I appreciate your being somewhat more civil. I respect the desire of many-most OLO commenters to remain anonymous however if you are unable to point to what you have written your comments just appear to be hard-left arrogance.

On Iraq the US and Australian humanitarian concern is very selective. Notably Christian Iraqis should be saved - as Obama can garner domestic support for that - but too many moderate Syrian Sunnis have not been saved.

But as I said in June article this year "It is Iraq’s huge amounts of oil, however, that differentiate Iraq from Syria." http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16422

2006 ASSESSMENT

On depth of views I point you to my 2006 article:

"The tangled web of Middle Eastern alliances" http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5234 written in 2006 which anticipated many of the issues pressing now:

"In September 2006 Iraq’s leader Prime Minister Maliki (a Shiite but toeing the US line) made a short scheduled visit to Iran and spoke of non-interference in each others affairs. However, Iraq now appears to be courting some Iranian involvement as reflected in discussions in late November 2006, in Iran, between Iraqi President Talabani (a Kurd) and Iranian President Ahmadinejad."

So the US is again unhappy with Maliki and many other Shiites identifying with Iran in a Shiite alliance.

Note that I also wrote in detail on the Kurds in 2006 http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5234 :

"The Kurdish guerrillas or Peshmerga continue to serve US and Israeli interests while fighting for an independent Kurdistan. The US and Israel have been supporting the Peshmerga because they are considered the only reliable local allies in Iraq and actually fought alongside US troops against the Iraqi army during the 2003 invasion.

Israel would, of course, prefer US forces remain in Iraq but realises that it must find any friends it can. Israel sees some similarities between its situation and that of the Kurds who, like them, are an isolated ethnic group in the Middle East."

Note how correct that 2006 assessment still is.

Regards

Pete

Good news to those lucky few who are not Muslims in Iraq.

Australia's own national security statesman (NSN) Tony Abbott has decreed:

"Australia to offer refugee visas to Iraqi Christians and Yazidis" http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-14/australia-to-offer-visas-to-iraqi-christians-and-yazidis/5670148

Before they are eligible - it is believed that they must first attend at least twenty Tony Abbott Ukraine remembrance ceremonies.

This replication of Iraq's sectarian mix in Australia assures Australia's security agencies of jobs growth for the next 50 years.

@ Spindoc. I claim no monopoly on truth or history. I like to think that when an issue arises it is capable of being resolved on the basis of evidence. Gather the evidence, formulate an explanation, test it against further evidence, modify the explanation and so on. It's not rocket science. It's called the scientific method. You are as well aware as I am that articles are written on this site and elsewhere that push a particular line, with a general disregard for evidence. David Singer is a particularly egregious example, but he is not unique.

One of my principal objections to the present article is that it ignores large swathes of relevant Ukrainian history, particularly post the Bolshevik Revolution. That is consistent with the treatment of the msm who prefer to ignore the historical facts relating to Crimea for example; or the US role in the fascist coup of February 2014; or the appalling slaughter of Russian speaking Ukrainians in the Donetsk region. It seems to Abbott and his ilk one should draw distinctions between atrocities done by those whom they currently support ,and those whom they currently oppose. The posturing and misinformation about the shooting down of MH17 is illustrative of our moral and intellectual bankruptcy on a number of levels.

@ Pete. I understand that the Yazidis are a particular branch of Islam who for the most part minded their own business. They are victims of the geopolitics of the region and deserve sanctuary. Making their move to Australia contingent on listening to Tony Abbott 20 times might just constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Hi spindoc

I know you have good intentions but oil and the opportunity to dominate an oil-land is probably the strongest factor in US Iraq policy. The Kurds of Iraq that the US is selectively assisting are also the closest thing to local allies the US (and Israel) have in Iraq.

Kurdish Iraqi oil is also high grade and VASTLY CHEAPER than the gas the US extracts in the continental US.

The US Middle Eastern oil policy is also a spoiling action to limit Chinese access to ME oil thereby limiting the economic-military growth of China.

It is no coincidence that Chine Oil Inc was flourishing in Libya but then the US-NATO airstrike-invasion of oil-rich Libya (2011) ejected the Chinese from that country http://www.globalresearch.ca/nato-s-war-on-libya-is-directed-against-china-africom-and-the-threat-to-china-s-national-energy-security/26763
--

James O'Neill

Your understanding that "the Yazidis are a particular branch of Islam" is only part right and doesn't rule out their minority status or ISIS oppression of them.

"According to some sources their religion is linked to ancient Zoroastrianism and Sufism while other sources view their religion as a combination of Shia and Sufi Islam with indigenous regional folk traditions." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidis

You will note that many consider the Kurds as Sunni Muslims but many Sunni Muslims, particularly ISIS, don't see it that way.

As to my Iraq article not covering Ukraine enough - your Putinesque view of world affairs might be frustrated but no doubt you agree with much in my recent Ukraine article "Ukraine: can anything save it?" http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16286

Regards

Pete

@ James O’Neill,

You know from my posting history that I support the rational analysis approach you describe however, and perhaps I should have been a little clearer, my comment was directed to your following three paragraphs which IMHO, are borderline CT’s of dubious factual value.

That said I fully support your comments in relation to the shallowness and imbalance of so many articles presented on OLO. That’s one for GY I guess.

@ plantagenet,

I agree that there was a fairly recent time when all the oil issues you raise were valid. Geo-politics, energy mixes and suppliers have changed dramatically in the last five years. If you still think they are as relevant you might like to explain the following?

“Fighting across Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and Gaza, and an accelerating economy, should mean higher oil prices. Yet crude is falling. Six years ago, oil soared to a record $147 a barrel as tension mounted over Iran’s nuclear program and the world economy had just seen the strongest period of sustained growth since the 1970s. Now, West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark price, has traded below $100 for 10 days and Brent, the European equivalent, tumbled to a 13-month low yesterday. What’s changed is the shale fracking boom. The U.S. is pumping the most oil in 27 years, adding more than 3 million barrels of daily supply since 2008. --Lynn Doan, Grant Smith and Moming Zhou, Bloomberg, 13 August 2014

spindoc

It shows both our contentions are correct rather than contradictory:

The US, which is not the only oil consumer in the world, is pumping out more oil and gas than it did 6 years ago. The price of oil is dependent on many things including increasing Russian and US alternate sources to Middle East (ME) oil.

Importantly the US also protects ME oil for its European allies (and Australia) who heavily rely on ME oil. Hence US involvement in Libya in 2011 - Libya being a major supplier to Europe.

The US also wishes to prevent excessive Chinese and Russian control of ME oil.

The US successfully uses its defence force as a foreign policy and economic tool with Iraqi and Saudi oil being a (or even the) major issue.

Cheers

Pete