The Iraqi military has been touting its “liberation” of the Anbar capital city of Ramadi, in an offensive that began in December and continued well into February, as a key achievement in the war on ISIS. The first UN visit to assess the city paints a gloomier picture.
UN officials describe the level of destruction in Ramadi as “staggering,” saying the city is in far worse condition than anywhere else in all of Iraq. The main hospital is destroyed outright, as is the train station, and the city lost 64 bridges and virtually its entire electricity grid in the fighting.
The city once had a population of around 500,000, and is today largely empty, with no timetable for when the military will start allowing civilians back in. The UN assessment warned that simply clearing the city of all the explosives could take quite some time, and didn’t even hazard a guess on fixing everything that’s been destroyed.
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine the reconstruction of Ramadi happening at all in the near-term, with the Shi’ite dominated government in Iraq already cash-strapped by falling oil prices and war, and unlikely to go into hock to rebuild an overwhelmingly Sunni city that was virtually in open rebellion before ISIS even got there.
The “war on terror” generally has only utter destruction in its wake. Of infrastructure, of government, of ruthless upholding of law, of any forced unity in diversity, of trade… So this town is a clear reminder that this path doesn’t lead to anything. Although I hate to say it, like with the Taliban also the Islamic State needs to be negotiated with. Without perpetual warfare their powers will wane pretty quickly. But of course that holds also true for the states engaged in trying to “wipe them out”. That’s why it will only stop when money finally runs out. The victory going to those not having spent their pensions on it?
Yes, the glory power of wealth is the prize, but it’s not the root cause. For the ingrate illusion that life is an unalienable right, that is the root of all lust for wealth.
First the educated upper-half of society must become totally corrupt, then their government must become absolutely corrupt and finally a bunch of fascist scum-bags must do the slaughter.
Comes now Donald Trump and he to go one better.
ROOT CAUSE — HATE AND BIGOTRY
By nature giving everyone a different level of intelligence, four impossibilities are overcome.
(1) If everyone was a genius, it would be impossible for anyone to achieve any challenge or satisfaction in doing the drudgery of manual labor. Likewise, if everyone had my slow and careful thinking laboring-class mind, we would all be back in the stone age and still trying to invent the wheel.
(2) If everyone had an equal ability to achieve wealth, it would be impossible to experience the emotions that bond society together in mutual need and affection. For it is compassion, pity and charity given in a way that produces a grateful response, it is this that sets humanity above all the other animals and makes us truly human.
(3) If everyone had identical intelligence, then no one would be essential, everyone would be expendable and the self-respect and value of us humans as a whole would be near zero.
(4) Impossible would it be to achieve maximum productivity, research, development and all the other standards for progress if everyone had the same intelligence.
So, after nature has given man the perfect mental capacities to achieve perfect happiness and equality for all, just look at what the most intelligent race, the white Western race, has done to our world. For instead of excepting as equal in value those of a different race, they declare that if your race does not have our high level of intelligence, we have a right to invade your country, steal your land and resources, make you impoverished by low wages and use poverty as a tool for slavery.
For in all Western white nations, going back to the beginning of civilization, my slow and careful thinking laboring-class, surely we have been kept impoverished as a tool of slavery.