So we’re finally arming the Kurds. At this point, it appears that the weapons are coming from the CIA, but plans are in the works for the Pentagon to supply them directly, rather than sending weapons to Baghdad that never ever get to the Kurds.
The Kurdish Peshmerga are as tough and determined as they come, but toughness and determination without weapons and ammo won’t win against ISIS and their captured state-of-the-art American weapons.
I’m tired of seeing this ISIS sweep falsely spun as an Iraqi civil war. This is a multi-state terror movement that must be destroyed. We need to go after ISIS full bore, not just to protect the Yazidis and Kurds and Baghdad, but on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border (such as it now is) and in Lebanon and Jordan.
The combination of intelligence failures about ISIS’ strength and a president who didn’t want to hear the news anyway have made the task much harder than it would have been if we’d nipped them in the bud. Now it’s time to mow them down before they flower further.
It’s not up to the Iraqi Shiites to get their act together because they can’t and won’t. It’s up to us to keep an enormous swath of the Middle East from falling to barbarians.
Embattled Farmers 
Oh, my God. The entire world is going up in flames and 90% of the weapons were made in the USA. Sickening, sickening. ISIS has our weapons, the Israelis have our weapons, the Ukrainians have our weapons, the Iraquis have our weapons, the Kurds have our weapons……….
We can’t bomb our way to peace. And there are no “good guys”.
Yuck.
We and the Kurds and the Israelis and the Ukrainians are the good guys! The Kurds and the Ukrainians could use many more of our weapons, their problem is not having enough. I’d rather confront ISIS there than in NYC on another bright blue September morning.
I half agree with you on this one. Yes, I am glad we are arming the Kurds directly. They seem to be the only group in the region that is willing to work with us, or anybody for that matter. Prior to now there was no way to arm them directly, without causing a major blow back problem with the Iraqi government, which is why it was being done covertly. But now that al-Maliki has f’ed up so badly and his army dropper their weapons and ran away from ISIS, it has created the spaces for us to aid the Kurds without going through Baghdad. However, it is foolish to think that there is anything the US could have done to nip ISIS in the bud. These were the rebels in Syria that would have gained if we had attacked Assad. These are the same guys McCain wanted to provide with US weapons. Thank God that Obama didn’t follow the neo-con advise and that he pursued a path to get Assad’s chemical weapons, or else ISIS would have them now. The US f-up was that we spent years and billions of dollars propping up the al-Maliki government while he was systematically dismantling any type of coalition government or army. ISIS is so well organized because many of the leaders are Saddam’s old Bathist army folks. L Paul Bremer f’ed up when he kicked them all out and told them to go home, with their guns. Going back into Iraq with a cowboy attitude like before, will get us nowhere again. Right now there is only one group willing to fight on the ground against ISIS, so we should be the air force for the Kurd’s ground troops. But until you see the other Arab countries step up and send fighters to battle ISIS, our options are limited.
We could have done air strikes against ISIS in Syria when they had their camps out in the open before they crossed the border into Iraq. We could have bombed them when they were advancing in the open across the desert in Iraq. I’m not holding my breath for other Arab countries to step up. I just hope the Kurds end up finally getting a country. It’s bothered me my whole adult life how they’ve been divided among Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey, when they are a distinct people and culture and should have a Kurdistan.
Bomb ISIS in Syria? McCain and the neo-cons wanted to arm them to fight Assad. I agree about the Kurds, if they had their own country them we would have a good ally in the region.
Now they’re responding to the airstrikes and won’t be out in the open as much. But there was time when it would have easy to bomb them.
The Kurds in all the countries where the Brits and French cruelly divvied them up after WWI — Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria — add up to about 30 million, and that’s a country. They don’t belong in any of the countries where they now live.
I agree with you on the Kurds, but we were not a position to be able to separate them from Iraq. As far as bombing ISIS, there was never an easy time. Just imagine what we would have heard about Obama abusing his power if he had bombed ISIS in Syria. It would have been 24/7; What is he doing bombing a country the we are not at war with? Why is he helping Assad by bombing the rebels? Congress didn’t authorize this, so he should be impeached! You know that right or wrong it would have been a full out attack by the neo-cons and right-wing.