Hi Poirot,

Yes, and for all that, ISIS can't be allowed to invade more cities and territory, to massacre more 'non-believers' or to gain more military and financial power. What next - to allow them to overrun air bases and capture and use fighters and bombers ? They already control territory the size of England. If we add together what affiliated and related groups control, from Mauretania and Nigeria across to Afghanistan, it probably amounts to territory as big as Queensland, and with twenty million people. They're not chicken feed.

Yes, no doubt Obama and the West, and their 'allies' in the Middle east, face a multitude of difficulties, with a vast tangle of competing interests, but they have to find ways through all that, to defeat one of the most brutal and anti-human forces the world has seen for centuries. Or should we continue to carp and snipe ?

I hope that's not too over-the-top for you :)

Cheers,

Joe

"...but they have to find ways through all that, to defeat one of the most brutal and anti-human forces the world has seen for centuries."

You must surely be talking about the U.S. Joe, and its use of cluster bombs, white phosphorous munitions, torture unto death, depleted uranium, Agent Orange, drone fired missiles which take out whole wedding parties, keeping people in cages, sanctions which starve millions of innocent kids and civilians, etc,.

Yeah, beheading a few Americans can't compare with the atrocities carried out by the Americans!

The headline in this mornings newspapers were to the effect that Abbott had declared war on a "death cult". My first reaction was incredulity: had he really declared war on the Washington neocons? Sadly, the reality was that we were embarking on yet another war, the seeds of which we had no small part in creating in the first place, as the citations I provided in my earlier post amply make clear.

No-one will disagree with you Joe that something should be done. The issue has always been whether what we have done and what we propose to do is a rational set of policies or are we simply going to make a bad situation worse. History would suggest that we make bad policy choices for all the wrong reasons and will undoubtedly act aggrieved when the inevitable blowback occurs.

It is not by chance that most Middle East nations have not clamoured to join the latest Obama/Kerry "coalition". After all they are part of the problem more than they are part of the solution. Conspicuously silent is Turkey, erstwhile NATO ally of the Americans. It just so happens that the Islamic State so called is deriving a significant measure of its income from oil transported across the Turkey Iraq border, in trucks amazingly free from bombing by the Americans, and sold on the Turkish black market.

Given Turkey's long antipathy to an independent Kurdish state, how do you think Ankara will respond to Iraqi Kurdistan welcoming 100 percent Australia,s support. In his haste to go to war Abbott has as usual totally failed to think through the geo-political implications of his policies. Perhaps because he does not have the freedom to do so, but let's not go there unless one is accused yet again of "anti Americanism". Slogans are so much easier than actual thought.

David and James,

Ah, would that the world was simple ! I'm sure Abbott has taken all of that into account, James, and still has to push on. What's the alternative ? Allow ISIS to continue its massacres and invasions ?

I'm sure even Lenin would say "Jesus, Mary and Me, I never thought my concept of 'useful idiots' could be taken so far."

It's a wicked world, David.

Joe

Abbott is a dictator, think he has forgotten what democracy is all about, the people who voted him in do not count at all in any decision he makes.

Hi Bonejab,

Well, he was elected, and it's within his powers as PM. If he brought it before Parliament, i.e. the lower House, how do you think he would go ?

I really wish you children would get over your pissy-fits. There's a very powerful and very nasty enemy out there, and since it's an ideology rather than just an army that has to be defeated, it will be around for a long, long time.

Or do you think that's not the issue ? Then what is ?

Joe