Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Expanding the caliphate - today's edition

ISIS has nearly full control of Palmyra, a Syrian city full of irreplaceable ancient ruins.

Jihadists from the Islamic State group were in almost full control of Syria's historic city of Palmyra on Wednesday night after the withdrawal of government forces, a monitor said. 
"IS controls almost all of Palmyra" following the withdrawal of government troops from all sectors except for a prison in the east and military intelligence headquarters in the west, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Look at the remains of the historic temples interspersed throughout the cityscape. Do you think that after what these goons did to the museum artifacts in Mosul there's any chance these pillars and walls won't be obliterated?

4 comments:

  1. Didja catch Bob Gates on Charlie Rose Monday night?

    " ,for sure, one of the lessons is we overestimate our ability to shape events in the Middle East. And the second is, the law of unintended consequences is always in effect. ... If something can go wrong, it will."

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  2. "And if something goes wrong the right will act like it should not have gone wrong." John Dingledy on LID

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  3. There's "things going wrong" and then there's deliberately signaling weakness, as the Most Equal Comrade has done with his red lines and leading from behind.

    And Gates is one weird dude. See latest post.

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  4. Oh, now you don't like Gates. You loved his book dissing Obama did you not? The fact is you can't count on being able to influence events in the Middle East. Why? Because it's not our territory. Yet you persist in believing in the lie that we can influence matters. Like you persist in a lot of debatable fictions about your ilk's ability to shape reality to your purposes. You claim to be on God's side though, and that of course requires the utmost patience.

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