BigCityLib Strikes Back

It's run by Saddam's old gang from the Baath party.  The best bit:

Rayburn questions whether even some of the foreign volunteers realise the extent to which they are being drawn into Iraq’s morass. Some of the fiercest battles being waged today in Iraq are for control of communities and neighborhoods that have been hotly contested among Iraqis for years, before the extremists appeared.

“You have fighters coming from across the globe to fight these local political battles that the global jihad can’t possibly have a stake in.”

Speaking of Old Saddam, he's looking downright gentlemanly these days.  My tribute to him can be found here.

But I think there's a 12 plane minimum before you get anything good, like Amir al-Mu'minin's Lamberghini.   Next up I hear we've been offered a couple of sewage treatment plants and a paint recycling center.

...to Jean Chretien.  Mind you, I'm not particularly set in my opinions re Canada's contribution to the fight against ISIS.  These thoughts still apply, more so, perhaps, now that the tide seems to have turned in Kobani.  But JC's main point, that there are more roles to be played in this situation beyond bomb-lobbing, and that being among the bomb-lobbers now may preclude taking up certain other roles later, is a sound one.  It's is certainly nice to hear an adult voice in this debate, rather than kooks like Terry Glavin, who seems to be dabbling a bit heavy in some kind testosterone replacement therapy.

Nine planes for six months; no ground fighting.  Why not?  As a matter of history, many things went wrong with the Arab Spring, but the nature of The West's commitment: providing air-support for indigenous resistance movements (I'm thinking of Libya specifically) was not one of those things. So it might work again, as in Libya.  ISIS's pattern has been to press forward until resisted, and then pull back and try elsewhere when  U.S. bombs start falling.  Like water sloshing in a bucket, back and forth between Iraq and Syria, but in smaller and smaller sloshes as their movements have been gradually constrained.  Six months from now a few of their leaders will have been killed, and their successes will have become less and less. Hopefully the movement will therefore have lost some of its savage allure, and recruiting and fund-raising abilities will be negatively effected.