Obama’s Iraq response is a waste of time

[Draggingtree]

RedState:

Obama’s Iraq response is a waste of time

 

By: streiff (Diary) | August 9th, 2014 at 04:24 PM

This afternoon US Navy F/A-18s launched from the USS George H W Bush struck ISIS targets in northern Iraq. This will go down in history as a strong contender for the “Too Little Too Late” award. Were thousands of people not being killed it would be a farce.

 

The second part of the military equation is the fate of religious and ethnic minorities now being targeted by ISIS for extermination. In those areas where American air power can intervene, to provide supplies to refugees, to evacuate refugess, or to kill ISIS fighters, we should. And we should do it on such a massive scale that it makes obvious to even the densest jihadi that the cost of is prohibitive.

 

While there is no doubt that the US has the military power to transform the face of the war in northern Iraq, protecting Kurdistan and Christian and Yezidi enclaves without the use of ground forces, what is lacking is the will.

[Draggingtree]

August 10, 2014

 

'Yazidi is Kurdish for 'Unarmed Israeli'

 

By Clarice Feldman

 

So said the brilliant Iowahawk this week as most people of the world watch in horror the spectacle of 40,000 members of this beleaguered Iraqi minority huddled without food or water on rocky Sinjar mountaintops. Below them the savages of ISIS kidnap Yazidi women, raping them and selling them into slavery. Heads of children ISIS decapitated are displayed on pikes in public parks and there are reports of distraught families tossing their beloved babies from mountaintops rather than watch them slowly starve to death.

 

The president took a brief respite from his heavy fundraising, golf, and vacation schedule to order some bombs dropped on Erbil to protect Americans there and some food drops for the Yazidis, but with no real plan. His was obviously a response to the horror the crimes inspired in Americans tempered by domestic political concerns -- the obvious distaste for the exercise U.S. military power he and his base share.

The WaPo editors deplore Obama's "half measures" in Iraq:

 

Obama’s authorization of Iraq airstrikes isn’t connected to a coherent strategy

[Draggingtree]

Militants kill 500 members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority

 

Some victims buried alive and 300 women kidnapped as slaves as US airstrikes continue

 

Sun, Aug 10, 2014, 08:36

 

Islamic State militants have killed at least 500 members of Iraq’s Yazidi ethnic minority during their offensive in the north, Iraq’s human rights minister told Reuters on Sunday.

 

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the Sunni militants had also buried alive some of their victims, including women and children. Some 300 women were kidnapped as slaves, he added.

 

“We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic States have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar,” Mr Sudani said.

 

The Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism,

 

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/militants-kill-500-members-of-iraq-s-yazidi-minority-1.1892678

 

I will be posting a brief description of the Yazidi religion in the History section for those who would like to know.

[Draggingtree]

Islamic State extremists deliver ultimatum to trapped Yazidis: 'Convert today - or die'

As Britain completes its first aid drop, terrified members of the beseiged Yazidi sect have reportedly been given the ultimatum by radical jihadis who have captured their villages

Displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community settle at the camp of Bajid Kandala at Feeshkhabour town near the Syria-Iraq border Photo: AP

By Alastair Beach

10:49AM BST 10 Aug 2014

Hundreds of terrified families belonging to the besieged Yazidi sect have reportedly been threatened with execution if they refuse to convert to Islam today, according to reports.

 

Yazidi refugees who are stranded on Mount Sinjar said they have received calls from family members trapped behind enemy lines in villages now controlled by Islamic State jihadis

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11024178/Islamic-State-extremists-deliver-ultimatum-to-trapped-Yazidis-Convert-today-or-die.html