13 June 2014
Greetings from Tyler,
Crisis? What crisis? None of the mainstream news headlines give so much as a hint as to what is actually taking place in Iraq. ABC calls the “Iraqi conflict.” CBS says “Violence” in Iraq. The New York Times headline on the story alludes to a Shiite call for able bodied men to fight “militants.” None of these is designed to give the casual reader the impression that anything out of the ordinary is going on. So far there is no indication that the current U.S. administration is particularly troubled either.
Our second magazine format issue of 21st Century WATCH featured on its cover a heartbreaking illustration of terrorists overrunning the Iraqi city of Fallujah, a place that claimed the lives of approximately 100 American servicemen and hundreds more grievously wounded as they fought rid that city of murderous zealots and establish a peaceful environment for the Iraqi people. But as our cover illustrated, Fallujah fell to a rag-tag terrorist faction on a par with al Qaeda.
But they’re not rag-tag anymore. Now they’ve swept down Iraqi highways in convoys of late model trucks flying black flags, sending Iraqi security forces running as they take murderous control of Iraq’s major cities. Even the capitol city of Baghdad is in jeopardy, along with the various diplomatic missions still maintained inside the famous “green zone.”
National television reported the fall of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city on June 11, together with the news that they had looted the city’s bank of $429 million worth of Iraqi dinars. Maybe, as is being preliminarily reported, Iraqi citizens will take up arms to defend Baghdad and the current rout will evolve into a war of attrition of sorts that will slow the terrorists’ complete takeover. Iran is reportedly sending its own elite units into Iraq, a move that is bound to further complicate everything.
America’s Middle Eastern foreign policy, to the extent that there was one, is now in a state of utter collapse. The brutal crisis playing out in Iraq is as bad, maybe worse than what the military experts warned would be the consequence of the hasty exit of U.S. forces, completed December of 2011.
While American politicians and analysts argue whether or not the recently released five Taliban commanders represent a credible threat, it turns out that the top commander of the ISIS forces terrorizing Iraq is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a former detainee released from a U.S. run prisoner camp in southern Iraq in 2009. He is regarded by some as the new head of the global jihadist movement, and considered more capable than was Osama bin Laden.
ISIS is the acronym for the al Qaeda-linked terrorist organization that is swarming across Iraq, taking city after city in blitzkrieg fashion. It stands for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, with variations on that theme. There are reports, backed up by photographs, of mass decapitations of Iraqi soldiers and police with their corpses left rotting along the roads. One of the more comprehensive reports is carried by the British Daily Mail and it is complicated. ISIS forces have also taken control of some oil fields and a refinery.
What happened to the Iraqi national forces who were trained and armed by the U.S. military prior to its hasty withdrawal? They’ve dropped their guns, abandoned their vehicles and changed out of uniform in an effort to melt back into the civilian population. Reports now are that the terrorists are in possession of the vehicles and arms that the U.S. left behind for Iraq’s defense by its own forces.
Kurdish forces have taken advantage of the disarray of the Iraqi military amid the ISIS onslaught to seize oil-rich territory they’ve claimed as rightfully theirs all along. We can’t begin to comprehend all the complexities of the catastrophic bloodbath unfolding in Iraq. But it is beyond all dispute that the lives, limbs and hundreds of millions of dollars expended there by the U.S. military were a pitiful waste. Iraq, it appears, or at least key portions of it will serve as a terrorist base for the violent imposition of Islam all over the world.
Even the U.S. State Department released a memo recently admitting that violent terrorist factions inspired by al Qaeda have multiplied tenfold across the Middle East over the past few years. How this chaotic bloodbath plays out in Syria, Iraq, and probably other vulnerable nations over the longer term is anyone’s guess at this point. But we can be sure that when it does, the terrorists will turn their attention to the United States, Israel and Europe.
It is hard, if not impossible to find anyone representing the current administration who thinks that this situation even deserves to be recognized as a crisis. The presidential response so far is to say that “Iraq may need more help,” whatever that may turn out to mean.
There is also no crisis playing out on our southern border as tens of thousands of illegal aliens including lots of unaccompanied underage children are warehoused at border facilities, being shipped to Arizona and to military bases, turning them into “refugee” centers. Texas border agents report aliens infected with every imaginable disease, including tuberculosis, are being “processed” and released into the public. You might say the system has been overwhelmed, and there is a growing sentiment that it has been done intentionally. According to a Hispanic U.S. border agent who’s questioned many of the individuals and children in holding centers and U.S. military bases, they’ve come because of media reports and churches in Mexico and Central America that are telling them that the time to go to the U.S. is now. They are coming because they are told that there is virtually no chance they’ll be sent home. And the flood continues with no sign of any change in strategy from the administration.
Reports, unverified by officials, state that they are being flown by chartered aircraft to military bases as far away from the border as Oklahoma and even Massachusetts. Although urgent actions are being taken to feed, shelter, and transport and legally represent the tens of thousands of illegal aliens pouring in, no defenders of the current administration seem to think there is a crisis, or anything amiss.
The president is saying that our future depends on the success of the “dreamers,” a term coined to derive compassion for the tens of thousands fleeing third-word poverty and corruption for a future dependent on U.S. taxpayer support. Not that the remaining contingent of working Americans can afford to be squeezed much more, the money to support the flood of aliens will simply be decreed into existence adding to the already insurmountable trillions in national debt.
America’s posture on the world-scene is absolutely defunct, defense of the southern border overwhelmed, while both the administration and other world powers seem intent on destroying the integrity of the dollar. Thanks to an agenda-driven mainstream media, most people have yet to notice. From a prophetic point of view it looks a lot like a revocation of God’s blessings, and the beginnings of punishment for the wholesale corruption that now defines our national culture. And this is just the beginning.
Mark Armstrong
