General Qassim Suleimani is a top Iranian general.
Meanwhile our MSM forget calls from Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to arm the rebels in Syria. Same as they forget that these same Salafi bandits kidnap and murder Christians, including leaders of the Syrian Orthodox church. The ignorant Republicans have supported "Convert or Die" Salafi bandits since 2011.
The irony of these situations can hardly be overstated.
Assuming you saw my article HERE at DKOS on Friday, you understand the General Suleimani side of the title. This piece will review the basics and update for what happened Friday and leaked out over the weekend.
Same time, our MSM corporate media are observing their own Obama Derangement Syndrome in full glory.
This corporate press disjunction from the situation on the ground in Iraq is rooted in their avoidance of one basic fact, the 800-pound gorilla in the room:
Never in the last 200 years have foreign actions, included American actions, mattered less for what what is going on in Iraq, Syria, and the Middle East.
We did break Iraq. That part remains accurate. Our Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Paul Bremer mal-governance broke Iraq. We threw in bombs and followed up with a one-man Tea Party. Infant mortality tripled -- contrary to CIA publications during the occupation -- and in all some 1,961,000 Iraqis died.
Coalition of the Willing went in based in part on claims generated by Ahmed Chalabi, who was being paid both by CIA and by Iranians. Eventually in 2011 this same Chalabi centered a political effort on behalf of Iran that prevented President Nuri al-Maliki from approving a Status of Forces Agreement, a.k.a. "SOFA." maintaining American troops in Iraq. (Chalabi: B.A. from M.I.T., Ph.D. from Chicago.)
Come 2014 the roof is on fire.
MSM corporate media repeat over and over that the invading bandits are "al Qaeda minded." They can't handle it that the ideology is Saudi Salafi. That these irregulars have been financed out of the Gulf States and that these favorites of the Republican Party have killed Shi'ia and Christians by the thousands.
MSM, here, avoid covering the real power moves. Then what are called Think Tanks get in the act with what gets passed off as strategic historical analysis.
These folks are serious. As in "serious people." When Trump talked about the Obama birth certificate, he could have been doing comedy. Thing is, this is the Republicans' best minds vetted through the Foreign and Defense Policy Studies operation at American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
"A plan to save Iraq from ISIS and Iran" from Jack Keane and Danielle Pletka (an Australian) writing for American Enterprise Institute in The Wall Street Journal on June 17, 2014:
...only the United States can provide the necessary military assistance for Baghdad to beat back our shared enemy.
Setting aside for the moment the question of whether this administration has the will to intervene again in Iraq, here are the components of a reasonable military package that can make a difference:
• Intelligence architecture. Iraq's intel screens went blank after the U.S. military pulled out in 2011. Washington needs to restore Baghdad's ability to access national, regional and local intelligence sources, enabling the Iraqi military to gain vital situational awareness.
• Planners and advisers. The Iraqi military needs planners to assist with the defense of Baghdad and the eventual counter-offensive to regain lost territory, as well as advisers down to division level where units are still viable.
• Counterterrorism. Special operations forces should be employed clandestinely to attack high value ISIS targets and leaders in Iraq and Syria.
• Air power. Air power alone cannot win a war, but it can significantly diminish enemy forces and, when used in coordination with ground forces, can exponentially increase the odds of success.
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Because these people are "serious people" and they have gone to such lengths to appear knowledgeable and important, that WSJ article turns out to be the very worst part of the MSM mishmash. Worse than the Birthers, right wing Senators recently offering support for Cliven Bundy, or Sarah Palin's reign as a sex symbol:
We will return to AEI and WSJ trying to do "serious" strategic analysis after considering what General Suleimani is doing. Keep in mind that "arm the rebels" from February 2012 to a couple months ago and that WSJ piece are the best that our right wing policy wonks can do.
For the NeoCons and their herd this is brilliance.
And so, that brings us back around to General Suleimani, a man raised in eastern Iran in a rural tribal society who has a 5th Grade education. This is a man who had to walk out from his village as a pre-teen together with one friend to go find a school.
Suleimani, 57, holds rank as Major General in the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. His job is that he has led Qods Force, which is the unit of IRGC that handles operations outside Iran.
Today Qassim Suleimani is in Baghdad.
The PR story has him "arranging a defense for the capital."
He has been leading troops in combat since his 20s. He rose during the Iran-Iraq War to command a sector of the war front. (He also went out at night doing his own recon missions; a match to General Douglas MacArthur during WW I and sometimes in the Philippines in WW II.) His reach today extends to the Lebanese Hizb Allah and his own Iranians commandos fighting to maintain the Shi'ia government in Syria. He has snuffed drug operations and opposed the Sunni Taliban with operations inside Afghanistan.
Suleimani has had troops in training or in combat one place or another almost every day for the last 35 years. His first task in Baghdad was to use his network and Iranian resources to begin recruiting Shi'ia men to form a very large Iraqi Hizb Allah, an Army of God.
A secondary effort reached out to the Shi'ia veterans of the Iran-Iraq War. These are men in their 50s and 60s. Otherwise, they had been largely ignored. That war is recast as "Saddam's War" with emphasis on destruction to the Shi'ia south.
Takeover.
Friday, General Suleimani took his guard in to the presidential offices and took control over Nuri al-Maliki. He laid down specific actions for the Iraqi government. He set limits on coordination of forces.
This was not a private one-on-one meeting. The General assembled staffers and several leaders of the current government to assure compliance.
al-Maliki has been useful for political purposes. That phase of Iraq's development is over.
General Suleiman's strategic goals speak to local politics:
-- Subvert the centuries old Arab/Arabic vs. Persian/Farsi Persian conflict with this fresh Sunni vs. Shi'ia blood fight.
-- Build an army. By fall of 2014 he will have his 500,000+ in Hizb Allah with AKs and experienced leadership, another 200,000+ reliable Iraqi army, and 50,000 Qods Force shock troops. That gives a 750,000:15,000 or 60:1 advantage. Plus tanks.
-- Define combat objectives. After the mass murders from these Salafi bandits in Mosul and other cities, a war of annihilation has to be expected. No prisoners.
-- Assess force positions. The first problem for a September attack from Suleimani's army will be to move quickly to seal off the Syrian border. And the Jordanian border.
The rest of it can be left to sessions of "Call of Duty" or a stiff Zombie game. What this massive, well equipped army finds, it will kill. And after that is done, the map comes out.
-- Distance from Baghdad to Damascus: 754 kilometers, 469 miles.
A long day's drive by armored column, if General Suleimani does not engage in grinding actions along the way to kill every last Salafi bandit.
He has Qods Force officers and commandos in Syria now, plus thousands of the Lebanese Hizb Allah. Throwing 250,000 men with full modern weaponry up there to end that fight will be the Keep It Simple Stupid opportunity.
As to the right wing "Plan" cited earlier:
-- America is not going to have a role in this fight.
-- Any American intelligence on the Sunni bandits would be appreciated, of course. (America turned down General Suleimani's offer to help crush the Sunni Taliban.)
-- Suleimani's recruited Iraqi veterans will be better at leading the Iraqi Hizb Allah than any combination of Americans. Going out at 60:1 the army that Suleiman is building do not need help.
-- Special Forces and airplanes are distractions. SF guys carry nifty combat axes, but going into the field at 60:1 overall and likely 20:1 for experienced field forces, Suleimani's army will have more to worry about from friendly fire events and bobby traps than from their Sunni opposition.
Suleimani = 5 to the NeoCons = 0.
Ultimately he ends the war connecting up with his Lebanese Hizb Allah, IRGC commandos, and the Shi'ia Assad forces in Damascus sometime mid-2015. Logistics could drag moving into Syria. The meet-up could come as late as mid-2016 with an extra 100,000 dead Syrians on the fire.
The new Sunni Caliphate is erased.
Have I mentioned that General Suleimani has a 5th Grade education. Every time out he gets 5 things right. One for each year ain't so bad.
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And of course General Suleimani is on the CIA and Israeli hit lists as a "terrorist." Mostly that is a favor to the Saudis and their NeoCon Experts At All Things.
EU agrees officially. Switzerland also condemns him. CIA has been doing the Saudi's murders for them for decades.
Suleimani is called a terrorist because he has people in the villages in Syria fighting these Sunni financed Salafi bandits. He arranges support for any and all Shi'ia communities in Syria. That is the mission for Iran. Blocking a Saudi takeover of Syria, blocking creation of a Caliphate is not what the Saudis want.
So CIA and the Department of State put General Suleimani on their official hit list. You could also say that he was Prematurely Anti-Caliphate and Anti-Mass Murder -- P.A.C.A.M.M. Similar to FBI's "P.A.F." tag for Lefties in the 1940s, for opposing Hitler in the 1930s.
For minds such as Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khamenei and His Eminence Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Suleimani may be seen to be Allah's gift to punish the unrighteous.
So of course the Saudis paid the right people to get him on the lists to put an American drone on him. Fire the missiles. Blast him off the planet. Saudis to Neocons/DoD/Israel to drones --- and money-money-money makes the world go around.
Makes cowards of us all. Unless you have that 5th Grade education. And know that in Paradise as a martyr you will live in the belly of a small green bird that sings in a tree below the throne of Allah.
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