Sunday, January 3, 2016

Jihad of the Day Goes to Saudi Arabia

After Saudi Arabia executed a Shia cleric along with forty-six other people, there was major outrage including protesters in Iran torching the Saudi embassy and also a Saudi consulate office somewhere else in Iran.  It's not clear if Iran called the Saudis 'murdering butchers' but they called them everything else, deservedly, and Saudis have now reacted by severing diplomatic relations with Iran.  (CNN: Saudi Arabia severs ties with Iran as Mideast protests rage)

Unknown how far this will extend since Saudi Arabia and Iran had no use for each other anyway because Iran is Shia Muslim and the House of Saud is Sunni Muslim.

Iran is heavily-engaged in fighting ISIS while also supporting Assad while the Saudis do little about ISIS and want Assad out of Syria.  The U.S. also wants Assad out of Syria, presumably because the Saudis want it.

Iraq has been trying not all that successfully to walk down the middle of Shia / Sunni Islam but Iraq blasted Saudi Arabia as well

It's not too clear where ISIS goes with this because they are an extreme form of Sunni Muslim and presumably align with the Saudis since both delight in executing Shia Muslims.  Both enjoy doing it in much the same way.


Meanwhile on the Palestinian front, Hezbollah is aligned with Iran because they are Shia Muslims.

Turkey is busily killing 'Kurdish rebels' but those are the same Kurds who are also fighting ISIS.


In the technical parlance, you've got all the fixin's for a major shitstorm.


The latest changes nothing for America as only a madman would get into the middle of all that.

Washington is committed to taking out Assad but it seems inevitable Iran will become more aggressive after the Shia stability in the region is threatened like that.  Presumably the Washington expectation is it can install a new cast of Disney characters in the Syrian government just as in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, etc and we sure loved the successes from those campaigns.


This emphasizes the Bernie Sanders position all the more:  if the Middle East wants to fight then let them do it and get Americans out of the theater except possibly for support.  There's very little in human history which is a bigger mistake than to get mixed up in an all-out holy war and this Shia / Sunni conflict isn't any closer to resolution after all the interference over there.

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