Makes sense. It's the closest American installation, on the closest piece of American territory. And the chance for the symbolic optics of sending U.S. personnel into pell-mell evacuation aboard helicopters from another embassy roof, a la Saigon in April 1975?
Priceless.
But here's something I didn't know:
The leadership of ISIS inside Iraq is now almost all former senior leaders of Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard, North said Monday on Fox News Channel's "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren."
"They know Baghdad. They've lived in Baghdad," North said, adding that they are the ones conducting military preparations for an attack on the largest American Embassy in the world.
Interesting, no? Time was when Saddam Hussein's "elite" Republican Guard suppressed jihadist maniacs like ISIS, at least inside Iraq, although like any Arab nationalist regime, they supported and used them externally against Israel and the West. It could be that these ex-Saddamites have converted to Islamic Fundamentalism, or it could be that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has shrewdly enlisted their alliance in overrunning Baghdad and the rest of Iraq because of their can-be-taken-for-granted motivation to avenge the humiliating defeat the U.S. dealt them eleven years ago. Perhaps both.
But according to Lieutenant Colonel North, pretty much everybody in Baghdad thinks an all-out attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad is inevitable. Would it succeed? Why wouldn't it? We don't have any significant forces in Iraq with which to stop such an attack. And given what happened in Cairo and Benghazi a couple of years ago, and the fact that our embassy in Tripoli, Libya, fled to Tunisia three months ago, the Obama Regime's track record of diplomatic facility defense isn't all that reassuring.
Ollie sums up why:
Asked what he thinks President Barack Obama believes about the situation, North replied, "I don't think he gives a damn. I think he's hoping that he can hold the lid on this until after this election so it won't be just another disaster for this administration."
On the other hand, given that the past year has been one scandal, outrage, and disaster after another, what would be one more? That is the "New Normal" that was established over five years ago, after all, and reapproved in 2012. Remember, public morale is a function of public expectations, and people can be acclimated to just about anything. Besides, how would yet another embassy falling get through all the ebola panicking? ISIS would have to string together multiple attacks in rapid succession, including here at home, to get our attention again.
Or have I given away the news of the next month or two? Sorry, my clairvoyance tends to be a little incontinent.
No comments:
Post a Comment