Iraq

Thursday

Taki

How dare they sell the beaches where I played as a child

 Porto Cheli Nothing is moving, not a twig nor a leaf, and I find myself missing the cows, the mountains and the bad weather. The sun has become the enemy, a merciless foe who can be tolerated only when swimming, something I do for close to an hour a day. Nothing very strenuous, mind you, except for an all-out 50-stroke crawl towards the end. For someone who has swum every year since 1940, I’m a lousy swimmer. Not as bad as Tim Hanbury, who swims vertically rather than flat on the water, and who resembles a periscope, but I’m no Johnny Weissmuller, the late great Tarzan of the Forties. From

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 14 August 2014

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, resisted calls for Parliament to be recalled to debate the crisis in Iraq. Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, said that the government was not considering military intervention ‘at the present time’. Mark Simmonds resigned as a Foreign Office minister, but Downing Street hastened to say that his resignation, unlike Lady Warsi’s a week earlier, had nothing to do with government policy on Gaza, since he was complaining he could not afford to rent a flat in London for his family with the £27,000 allowance. A man sought by police investigating the theft of a fish tank from a furniture shop in Leeds hid in a bush and

The Spectator

Violence, fear, confusion: this is what comes into a leadership vacuum

The old cliché that ‘nothing happens in August’ has again been brutally disproved. From the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war to the Russian invasion of Georgia six years ago, August is a month often packed with violence — but rarely more so than this year. In Syria, Christians are being crucified for refusing to convert to Islam. In northern Iraq, there are reports of mothers throwing their children from mountains rather than leaving them to the jihadis who are parading the severed heads of their victims. Russian convoys are rolling towards the Ukrainian border as Vladimir Putin tests the resolve of the West. Barack Obama has

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Obama: ‘We broke the ISIL siege of Mount Sinjar’

When President Obama finally turned up to his press conference on Iraq and the situation in Missouri, he made quite clear that he does not intend to increase US involvement in the country. He said Americans could feel ‘proud’ of the campaign that their country had led, pointing to the discovery that there were far fewer Yazidis trapped on the mountain than previously thought. The President added that he did ‘not expect there to be an additional operation to evacuate people’ from the mountain, and that the majority of military personnel who assessed the situation will be leaving Iraq in the coming days. He did add that the situation remains ‘dire’ for

John Slinger

Inaction is easy; action is harder but needed now

It’s easier to oppose than propose war. The conflict between Israel and Hamas inspired #NotInMyName on Twitter, and opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was spearheaded by the ‘Stop The War’ Coalition. It is easy for ‘anti-interventionists’ to cite negative consequences of action already documented, for example in post-invasion Iraq, than for ‘interventionists’ to make their case. Insults like ‘warmonger’ or ‘blood on your hands’ slip off the tongue more readily than complicated arguments to the effect that inaction can cause even more blood-letting and chaos, and that those who advocate it bear some responsibility for the ensuing carnage. The present crisis facing the Yazidis, Kurds and indeed

The Spectator

Podcast: Iraq War III, the cult of Richard Dawkins and the moaning middle class

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_14_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Iraq War III, the cult of Richard Dawkins and the moaning middle class” fullwidth=”yes”] The View from 22 podcast [/audioplayer]The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has extended its hold from eastern Syria into western and northern Iraq, massacring Shi’ites, Christians and Yazidis wherever it can. But can we afford to let Isis run wild, asks Max Boot in this week’s Spectator. Peter Hitchens, a columnist for the Mail on Sunday, discusses this on our podcast, and argues that we have made the most tremendous mess in Iraq, and it’s high time we realised this. The Spectator’s Douglas Murray suggests that we need to be more strategic about

Andrew J.

The West isn’t the solution in Iraq. It’s the problem

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_14_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Peter Hitchens and Douglas Murray discuss Iraq and Isis” startat=52] Listen [/audioplayer]To hawkish right-wingers, but also to many militant liberals, the antidote to the problem of Isis is clear: the application of military power to defeat the jihadists and lay the foundation for a humane and stable political order, beginning in Iraq but eventually extending across the Islamic world. There are several problems with this analysis. For starters, it glosses over the fact that military power in the form of the 2003 Anglo-American invasion created the opening for the jihadists in the first place. Where there had been stability, US and British forces sowed the seeds of anarchy.

Max Boot

We can’t afford to let Isis run wild in Iraq

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_14_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Peter Hitchens and Douglas Murray discuss Iraq and Isis” startat=52] Listen [/audioplayer]Iraq is a bloody mess. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has extended its hold from eastern Syria into western and northern Iraq, massacring Shi’ites, Christians and Yazidis wherever it can. Meanwhile in Baghdad there has been a constitutional crisis, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki threatening to cling to power even though his own political bloc has chosen a different candidate. The situation is now so bad that it has impinged on the holiday arrangements of our own leaders in the West. President Barack Obama, as he relaxes in Martha’s Vineyard, is at the same time

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Westminster plays recall tennis

Now that David Cameron has returned from his Portuguese fish-shopping exploits, the game of recall tennis that Westminster has been playing for the past few days has stepped up a few notches. Now it’s not just Philip Hammond, Michael Fallon and other Cabinet members leaving COBR meetings who can be asked whether or not they think Parliament should return from recess to debate the situation in Iraq, but the Prime Minister himself. It’s running like this: another Tory MP writes to the Prime Minister to say there should be a recall, or a senior party figure from the Lib Dems or Labour says there should be one. The ball lands

Andrew J. Bacevich

Don’t listen to the hawks — the west should leave Iraq alone

This is a preview from this week’s Spectator, available tomorrow: Peering down from the Olympian heights of the New York Times, the columnist David Brooks writes that “We are now living in what we might as well admit is the Age of Iraq.”  There, in the Land of the Two Rivers,  he continues, a succession of American presidents has confronted the “core problem” of our era:  “the interaction between failing secular governance and radical Islam.” To Brooks and other hawkish right wingers, but also to considerable number of militant liberals, the antidote to this problem is clear:  the application of military power to defeat the jihadists and lay the foundation for a

Douglas Murray

When it comes to jihad porn, abstinence is best

This feature is a preview from this week’s Spectator, out tomorrow: I am sure we’re all in agreement that watching videos of adults abusing children is wrong. At least outside the halls of BBC light entertainment (historically speaking) such a consensus must exist. So how has it become not just right, but seemingly virtuous, to watch and then promote pictures of big bearded men chopping off children’s heads? The proliferation of torture and beheading porn is one of the social media horrors of our day. Every minute millions of people around the world send links to videos and photographs. And as world news gets darker, even if you don’t seek

Tuesday

Alex Massie

We may not think ourselves at war with ISIS but they are pretty sure they are at war with us.

John McTernan’s column in today’s Telegraph about Kurdistan – and our, that is the West’s, debt of honour to the Kurds – is a piece of which, I think, the late Christopher Hitchens would have been proud. The Kurds had no greater western defender than Christopher and he would, I believe, have been appalled by the pusillanimity on display in Whitehall and the White House alike in recent days. Granted, ‘because Christopher Hitchens would have supported it’ is an insufficient justification for military action. Then again, the witless self-abasement of the so-called Stop the War coalition is no reason to oppose it either. (By Stop the War, of course, they mean let someone vile win

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘These people want a holocaust’: pressure grows on PM for recall over Iraq

Downing Street remains resolute that there will not be a recall of Parliament over the situation in Iraq. But Conor Burns, a Tory backbencher who resigned as a ministerial aide over Lords reform, has just joined calls for a recall by writing to David Cameron warning that helping to evacuate the religious minorities at risk is not enough. His letter, seen first by Coffee House, is pretty strong stuff. Burns tells Cameron that ‘these people want a holocaust of everyone who does not share their brutal ideology. It simply cannot be enough to try and evacuate those [ISIS] want to kill and then leave them, as the Pentagon admitted last

Ed West Ed West

A lesson of Iraq in 2014: the nation-state is the future

The collapse of some of the Sykes-Picot states in 2014 will spur people to ask which way the world is heading and what it all tells us, just as with the fall of Communism in 1989. After Communism we had at first Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History,which foresaw the triumph of western-style liberal democracy, and then the more prescient, although equally controversial, The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntingdon, which viewed the world as essentially consisting of power blocks centred around ancient civilizational, religious ties. So what does 2014 mean? A clear lesson that the Yazidis and Christian Assyrians have learned is that without a patch of land for

Monday

Damian Thompson

Obama’s intervention in Iraq proves that religion really is the new politics

Today we are witnessing the extraordinary – and long overdue – spectacle of an American president intervening in Iraq to protect religious minorities from ISIS death squads motivated by their own extreme religious beliefs. The minorities are Christians, whose looming extinction the West has ignored for years, and the Yazidis, members of an ancient faith rooted in Zoroastrianism that very people had heard of until the past fortnight. The butchery in Iraq and Syria – and that is exactly the right word, since ISIS have literally cut children in half – bears out my argument that ‘religion is the new politics’. Here is the Spectator cover story on that subject

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Britain’s military involvement in Iraq is becoming increasingly confusing

What is the extent of British involvement in Iraq? Philip Hammond today said it was simply to provide humanitarian assistance, but the suggestion that ministers could send Tornado jets to help with the relief operation has confused some. Even though sources have told the BBC that the jets will not be involved in air strikes, Jack Straw has immediately read the report as a sign that the UK could be heading towards ‘more active intervention’. He told ITV: ‘That’s a start. If you’re going to have more active intervention with aeroplanes striking at ISIS columns or drones, you need a lot of intelligence and the next stage is to send Tornados.

Steerpike Steerpike

Louise Mensch fat shames ISIS’s leader

After Obama sanctioned attacks on ISIS over the weekend, a new hashtag began to trend on Twitter  – #AmessagefromISIStoUS. Via social media, militants from the Islamic State began to threaten anyone who dared to get involved in the Middle East. Before long, the backlash began, with Americans sending messages back to jihadis under the hashtag #AmessagefromUStoISIS. The ex-Tory MP Louise Mensch couldn’t resist, and duly joined in this hawkish exchange: It’s true Obama got #ISIS all wrong and Iraq policy all wrong but I don’t care, not today. He is sending airstrikes. Thank you Mr. President — Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) August 8, 2014 Some left wingers pretty upset ISIS are being bombed. I’m

The Spectator

Video: Should Parliament be recalled over Iraq and ISIS?

Neither Obama nor Cameron seem ready to return from their holidays to debate how best to respond to the events in Iraq. However, in our look at the week ahead, Isabel Hardman argues that the debate shouldn’t just be taking place in newspapers, but also in the House of Commons. Could we see a recall of Parliament, asks Fraser Nelson, or is Cameron simply too scared after last year’s disastrous debate over Syria? Douglas Murray suggests that however much we may care about the events in Iraq, the only country that can do anything about it is America.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Opinion polls should be the last thing on MPs’ minds now

There was a revealing moment on the Today programme this morning when Lord Dannatt was asked whether he accepted that the response from the British public to any further military involvement in Iraq would be uproar. His reply came quite gently, but the former Chief of the General Staff made quite clear that what should be uppermost in politicians’ minds as they considered the options for further helping the Yazidi people and other religious minorities being seriously persecuted in the country was not opinion polls in this country, but the risk of a genocide. One of the most unedifying things about the decision that Parliament took almost a year ago

Friday

Tom Tugendhat

Nato has a choice: stop ISIS or witness another genocide

What we are witnessing in Northern Iraq today is the unwinding of lives. Where once they were blurred, intertwined and interdependent, now they are monochrome, distinct, raw. The process is bloody and cruel. The Yazidi community, which has worshipped in the area since before Jonah warned the king of Nineveh to repent, is being deliberately murdered. This isn’t the first time we have watched genocide happen. In Rwanda one group committed the worst massacres since the Holocaust while we stood by. For many reasonable military reasons it was thought too difficult to act: the distance, the internal isolation, the confusion. In Yugoslavia, we watched as men were murdered and women raped in acts perhaps best summarised by the atrocity of Srebrenica. But we didn’t want to get involved