All good points, with the partial exception of the statement that IS is a guerrilla force and not a conventional army.
In fact, it seems to be a little of both, or in a transition phase to a conventional army. Guerrillas don't travel in armored personnel carriers or use artillery beyond mortars. Guerrillas hide among the people.
In Syria and in the Sunni provinces of Iraq, IS clearly took off as a guerrilla force, with the support of large numbers of disaffected Sunnis (disaffected is not quite the right word, but it will do)
Insofar as Kurdistan is concerned, IS could function only as a conventional force. IS would have little or no popular support among the Kurds or amon almost all the minority groups in Kurdistan, so if IS tried to survive as guerrillas in Kurdistan they would suffer the fate of the CIA & Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs.
That said, all the points about the long term commitment of a no fly zone hold, as does the comparison to 1991. Saddam Hussein was not at the head of a guerrilla force. Another parallel is the rapid spinning of tales making Saddam out to be worse than Hitler. Saddam was pretty bad and IS seems worse than Saddam. But today I just Rod Dreher telling stories about videos of decapitated children and Christian heads on pikes, with no links and no sources. Anyone remember the babies thrown out of incubators in Kuwait that never happened? 1991, 2001, and maybe in 2014 - demonization of the enemy is a dangerous thing.
All good points except for the claim that the US ceased to be a settler colony nation after WWII. How can that possibly be? Did the entire history of European colonization of the Americas suddenly cease to exist or matter after 1945 because the US granted Philippine "independence" on that very traditional Filipino holiday of July 4, 1946? US history up until the present cannot be understood apart of the settler colonial origins of the US up through the 18th century and the settler colonial expansion of US territory throughout the 19th century. The process did not suddenly stop in 1900, and it continues to proceed and reverberate to this day. Sarah Palin's appeal is not just to the descendants (literal and figurative) of the Confederacy, but to the settler colonial heritage more broadly. And it is not just her, and not just Republicans.
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All good points, with the partial exception of the statement that IS is a guerrilla force and not a conventional army.
In fact, it seems to be a little of both, or in a transition phase to a conventional army. Guerrillas don't travel in armored personnel carriers or use artillery beyond mortars. Guerrillas hide among the people.
In Syria and in the Sunni provinces of Iraq, IS clearly took off as a guerrilla force, with the support of large numbers of disaffected Sunnis (disaffected is not quite the right word, but it will do)
Insofar as Kurdistan is concerned, IS could function only as a conventional force. IS would have little or no popular support among the Kurds or amon almost all the minority groups in Kurdistan, so if IS tried to survive as guerrillas in Kurdistan they would suffer the fate of the CIA & Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs.
That said, all the points about the long term commitment of a no fly zone hold, as does the comparison to 1991. Saddam Hussein was not at the head of a guerrilla force. Another parallel is the rapid spinning of tales making Saddam out to be worse than Hitler. Saddam was pretty bad and IS seems worse than Saddam. But today I just Rod Dreher telling stories about videos of decapitated children and Christian heads on pikes, with no links and no sources. Anyone remember the babies thrown out of incubators in Kuwait that never happened? 1991, 2001, and maybe in 2014 - demonization of the enemy is a dangerous thing.
All good points except for the claim that the US ceased to be a settler colony nation after WWII. How can that possibly be? Did the entire history of European colonization of the Americas suddenly cease to exist or matter after 1945 because the US granted Philippine "independence" on that very traditional Filipino holiday of July 4, 1946? US history up until the present cannot be understood apart of the settler colonial origins of the US up through the 18th century and the settler colonial expansion of US territory throughout the 19th century. The process did not suddenly stop in 1900, and it continues to proceed and reverberate to this day. Sarah Palin's appeal is not just to the descendants (literal and figurative) of the Confederacy, but to the settler colonial heritage more broadly. And it is not just her, and not just Republicans.