One more battle and Mosul will be fully liberated, inshallah

November 21, 2017 8:18 PM

Warning: graphic violence
After the liberation of Mosul, an orgy of killing
posted by Joe in Australia (10 comments total)

Reading that was a descent into hell.
posted by mecran01 at 10:33 PM on November 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

We (the USA, the West more broadly) fucked this place up real good. Now let's do Iran! North Korea!
posted by Meatbomb at 11:19 PM on November 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

We (the USA, the West more broadly) fucked this place up real good.

I think it all got away from the West years ago. Lately they’ve been fucking themselves up, with active help from Saudi and Iran. The USA seems to me to have been more like the dumb overgrown kid in the playground who the others can sometimes talk into punching people for no reason.
posted by Segundus at 12:34 AM on November 22, 2017 [12 favorites]

The story is any war, anywhere. Destruction, murder, more and more murder, forgetting even why it's all started but it's all that there is now, is war. I've read a lot about Stalingrad, this felt much the same -- the city destroyed, the fight to the death. (Though it seems to me that the Russians would have overrun that city in a day, because the Russians are insane once they get moving, and don't give a damn about losses from snipers or anything else.)

Obvious differences are cell phones, and air strikes that can be brought in on the same block you are on. Honestly, I would have thought that the US would be working closer with the Iraqis on the ground, using drones remarkable photography and firepower to pinpoint any sniper and blow him out of his shoes.

As far as killings after the main fighting is done -- war. That's just a part of it. Imagine you're a Russian and here's some German or Romanian or Italian and he's begging for mercy and you're looking at your city blown to garbage, your brother dead, maybe your family dead -- sorry, Fritz, fuck you very much. Bang. Especially once they found how the Russians in German captivity were treated. Whoa. And the Iraqis had that same thing, knowing that ISIS had mercilessly killed so many captives -- no war is sane, but these types of things put a razors edge on things.

The torturing, and then giving the person being tortured a restorative break, a bit of time off, some food, some water, so he could be tortured more -- that reminds me of the plains Native Americans -- Comanche, Apache, et all. Death was a mercy, a gift, but not given nearly as fast as the Iraqis gave it to ISIS prisoners, who took it for just a few hours. Not fun hours, but not days of it.

I like that the article brought up Abu Ghraib, it didn't paint a picture of "those bad Middle Eastern torturers" or whatever, reminded that torture is a human thing, practiced by most societies, at least at some time of their evolution, when they are sick.

~~~~~

The western powers fucking that whole region up began at the end of WW1, when the winning powers divvied it up, not knowing and not caring one whit about the people who lived there. The legacy of WW1 continues there, and it seems that it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

I can't help but wonder what might have happened if FDR didn't die from polio. I am not a historian, I'm sure someone will come in here and set it straight if I've got it wrong, but it seemed that FDR was really anti-empire, perhaps with FDRs hand on the tiller John Foster Dulles doesn't get his CIA, which is where the US really began to get it's hands bloody, it's where we really began to get sick.
posted by dancestoblue at 2:23 AM on November 22, 2017 [10 favorites]

dancestoblue: "The story is any war, anywhere. Destruction, murder, more and more murder, forgetting even why it's all started but it's all that there is now, is war."

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up. Hosea 8:7

That's not for any side in this, it's for all sides. Everybody. All together now....
posted by chavenet at 2:59 AM on November 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

What a read to start the day. And to think how effectively this was sold as a feel good story when it was liberated.
posted by Busithoth at 5:51 AM on November 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

I remember visiting Hanoi around 2012 or so, and one of the landmarks was the crash site of a B 52 bomber in the middle of the city. It isn't much to look at, just a piece of wing and some tires mostly submerged in a shallow pond.

I heard some bells, and looked over and saw school was being let out. They built a school right in front of the crash site. That's when I realized just how fucked up Iraq is going to be for the next several generations because of the US invasion, and even after they've recovered they'll remember why their country was ruined for a long time.
posted by AlSweigart at 8:56 AM on November 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

And to think how effectively this was sold as a feel good story when it was liberated.

I remember how starkly the media accounts of the liberation of Mosul differed from the same media's accounts of the horrors taking place in Aleppo. As if it mattered whose bombs are falling on your head.
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 2:22 PM on November 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

I can't find it now but I recall someone posting a multicolored ethnic and religious map of Iraq and it's environs back when the.invasion was about to begin which looked like a mosaic of a Jackson Pollock painting made by sugar ants.

And, for one, I have been thinking about the Yezidis and their sufferings of late.

What a horror this has been and all for what ?
posted by y2karl at 3:33 PM on November 23, 2017

I am massively biased towards arguments of realpolitik and geopolitical strategy, but nonetheless my only answer is that it's been a way of pouring money into the pockets of military contractors.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:45 AM on November 25, 2017 [1 favorite]