Boots on the ground

Syria’s a moral wasteland (at the presidential level) in Bashar al-Assad and physically after he bombed and beat the landscape with artillery fire designed to kill as many people as possible

Boots on the ground


By Sarge


Scotland is still in the United Kingdom. That means Texas must admit the Free Texas Republic probably won’t be able to secede. Shucks! Additionally, it indicates the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations can breathe a little easier knowing the drive to declare them a parking lot for Massachusetts and Connecticut probably will go no further. (As “L’il Rhody” is my home state I feel no problem with stating the obvious.)

ISIS/ISIL is THE topic du jour and news readers are debating presidential press secretaries as to who in the Arab sector will drop some boots on the ground in the soon to be continual combat against Radical Islam. As was so astutely observed by Shepard Smith on FOXNEWS, the Saudis may pump oil based profits into the conflict in the way of supplies and comestibles (foodstuffs such as burned sheep entrails, housefly pate’ and clabbered goats’ milk in their version of MREs (Meals Refused by Ethiopians); but they sure aren’t going to put Saudis in boots either on the ground or toes up after combat.

Jordon says they’ll take refugees so it’s obvious they don’t want to tick off ISIL/ISIS any more than is necessary. Christian and Shia refugees attract these vultures faster than a road-killed “possum on the half shell” (that’s an Armadillo to y’all non-southerners). (Oh, yeah! My southern dialect is protective coloration lest I be evicted from the Sportsmen’s Paradise because I was born a Yankee.)

But I digress. Jordon is arguably the most secular Arab nation. The king shops in the best clothiers on the planet and speaks English better than people from Rhode Island (they have a “special”, “earthy” dialect all their own; sort of a grafting of Bostonian Brahman, Bronx cheer and Jersey Wiseguy.) But again I digress. Jordon and Qatar and Dubai and all of those peachy keen nations pushing the sand back into the Persian Gulf with Ski Chalets and Ocean Surf generators in the desert, don’t want a generalized uprising or insurgency of ISIS/ISIL infiltrators cutting the indigenous populations’ heads off for turning their backs on the Qu’ran, Mohammed and Allah. It wouldn’t be good for their portfolios.

Then there’s the rest of the Arab Coalition Obama says will help combat Radical Islam: Palestine, Cyprus, Lebanon and Southern Turkey.

Palestine was pretty much bombed back into the Stone Age by the Israelis, a particularly tenacious group of people accepting NO combat actions as anything but an invitation to beat the hell out of the attacker. Lebanon, to my knowledge is alive though they bear a tragic moral resemblance to Palestine after Hezbollah, Hamas and their buddies started shipping terror across the region. It isn’t likely they’ll start a conscription process to violate the tenets of the Qu’ran stating you WILL NOT kill another Muslim although they might sacrifice the Christians in the group.

Syria’s a moral wasteland (at the presidential level) in Bashar al-Assad and physically after he bombed and beat the landscape with artillery fire designed to kill as many people as possible. Assad’s theory is “kill ‘em all, we’ll retrain survivors”. No matter what happens; if the US sends supplies to the dissidents fighting to escape Assad’s regime or if we bomb ISIS/ISIL troops for those dissidents, our own munitions will eventually be used against us, no matter who wins.
Cyprus is located in the Mediterranean. It has no dog in this hunt. It’s like L’il Rhody again. It’s there, but who cares? It has no effect on the problem one way or another.

Turkey? What can you say about a country named after the guest of honor at a Thanksgiving dinner? They have the Kurds fighting ISIL/ISIS but there’s NO real all-out effort extended by Ankara. They have their own problems in the region and probably won’t get any more involved than they need to outside of letting bombing missions originate from US supported (bribes guaranteed through foreign aid) bases already extant.

So; for a day didn’t offer much hope for a coherent column it seems there’s something to talk about.

But I still can’t get away from being a Rhode Island native. (Sheesh! Cringe!)