Another Year Shot to Hell

As 2015 draws to a close, it's hard to find anything redemptive about it.

The Iraqi army seems to be largely in control of the rubble that used to be Ramadi, indicating that the carpet bombing approach endorsed by almost all the Republican candidates for president is not too different from the approach being used by the Obama administration.  A couple of Sunni militias seem to have been involved in the "reconquest," but it remains to be seen whether the Abadi government will turn out to be any less sectarian than the Maliki government.

Tamir Rice's murderer has been cleared by a grand jury under the transparently biased guidance of County Prosecutor T. J. McGinty.  Anybody who's watched the intro to "Law and Order" knows that police and prosecutors are as close as two turds in a toilet.  Cases of potential police abuse should always be handled by outside prosecutors — preferably from outside the state.

The Canadians have started admitting the 25,000 Syrian refugees they plan to accept in the coming year.  Uh oh!  Looks like we'll need a border wall to the north as well as to the south!  (Tr*mp, of course, will make the Canadians pay for it.)

I was looking at my very first post to this blog, from January 2008, and found the following:

     Hillary Clinton says, "Just trust me. My experience as First
     Lady means I understand the change you want even better
     than you do, and I promise to deliver.  It'll be just like when
     Bill was President. You'll be back to drinking lattes and
     making paper fortunes in no time flat!"

     Uh huh. She'll just "change" things back to the way they were
     before Dubya and all your dreams will come true. But what if
     you're like me, and the Clinton Administration made you
     nostalgic for the liberalism of the Nixon  Administration?
     And by the way, just what's the chance of Hillary voluntarily
     giving up those new authoritarian powers Bush/Cheney
     usurped for the presidency? (I'd put it just shy of 0.03%.)

I didn't have much hope for "hope and change" either, and I was right.  Happy New Year.

The Mess in Iraq

Saddam Hussein was dreadful, but Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has been a catastrophe.  His virtual elimination of Sunni Muslims from the Iraqi government, beginning with his targeting the now exiled Sunni vice president Tariq al-Hashemi immediately following the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2011, left Sunni Iraqis with no political power and no way to address grievances.  Add to that his increasing authoritarianism, and civil war looked inevitable.  ISIS is merely the precipitating factor.

Those currently insisting that Obama "should have" left some American troops in Iraq conveniently forget that Maliki refused to sign the status of forces agreement that would have permitted that.  It was clear at the time that Maliki wanted the United States out of Iraq, so he could more easily pursue his sectarian goals.

Now Maliki wants Obama to send air power to help him fight off the ISIS rebels, but without dependable American spotters on the ground, air strikes are more likely to kill hapless civilians than rebel fighters.  Old Baathists are joining up with the ISIS forces,  Shi'a militias are forming, and QUDS guardsmen from Iran already may be in Baghdad.  Quite frankly, any American involvement at this point seems absurd.

I'm waiting for the Kurds to spread out from their autonomous region, perhaps even into Syria, and declare an independent Kurdistan.  Their pesh murga is the best fighting force in the region, and the ongoing chaos in Iraq may be their best chance to have the homeland that has been their goal for many years.