Sunday, December 14, 2014

Juan Cole — Enter the Dragon: China offers Iraq Aerial Strikes on ISIL/ Daesh

In short, China is beginning to behave like a classic capitalist imperial country, intervening with military force to protect investments, markets and trade routes. In short, Beijing now has an interest in Iraq that seems to make it willing to deploy air power to defeat Daesh.
It's the oil, stupid.

10 comments:

Ryan Harris said...

China has Uighurs fighting for ISIL and they are concerned as anyone about ISIL ambitions to retake restive Xinjiang as part of their caliphate. Additionally if the Uighurs return to China after being battle hardened and picking up the behaviors common place in Syria/Iraq, they will be a bigger problem in China. Oil and capitalism are the go-to evils for progressives, whereas it seems Nazis and communism are the evils for the equivalent groups on the right.

Maybe ISIL is actually evil enough, to spur even neutral China into action? The inability of the author to even contemplate any motivation besides capitalism and oil in incomprehensible to me... but my mind has been polluted with simplistic mainstream ideas which are largely viewed as worthless propaganda by those on the extreme left.

Ryan Harris said...

Maybe, THIS would be disturbing to China in their own back yard? These kids are from areas that border China. All the talk about China's new sphere of influence... this is their geographic area to manage, right? Silk road and all that...

Matt Franko said...

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. .

Maybe we could get the Chinese to undercut the US military and "get a better deal for the taxpayers...." on ISIS elimination....

Now if we could only get these USD zombies to paratroop in grass cutters here after they take care of the head cutters there we might be able to get our lawn cut for $10....

Tom Hickey said...

Why exactly is ISIS-Daesh, "evil"? Because they do things that "civilized" people don't like? This is an age-old fight over territorial rule, and there are no rules in warfare.

The "Caliphate" is not a term lightly chosen and has an expressed purpose — that is to erase the lines drawn on maps by Christian and, worse, godless conquerers after the fall of the Islamic Empire and to reunite the Islamic community under Islamic law and Sunni rulership.

This is a more appealing message to many than Al Qaeda's agenda of overthrowing Western-backed national leaders. If it catches on, it will become a real problem for the West and the MENA leaders the West backs.

These are traditional tribal peoples seeking to preserve their traditions and reclaim lost territory. Their symbolic weapon is the sword, and they distain Western militaries for refusing to fight directly man to man.

In fact, the West is the very definition of evil according to their tradition and cultural mindset.

And underlying all this is the oil.

Unknown said...

Ryan-

I know its your schtick to point out progressive "faults", (as if capitalism and oil arent dont present serious global problems that must be overcome) but lets at least try to be honest.

In the link the author spends almost the exact same number of words saying exactly what you are complaining about him not saying as he did with the capitalism and oil comment.

"China has a restive population of Muslims in its northwest and is no doubt afraid of the influence on them of Daesh (Chinese Uigurs are fighting alongside militants in Syria)."

P.S. Communism and Nazism are not significant things for which conservatives should be concerned with as they dont exist in a meaningful way in the modern world. So your comparison there between progs and cons is really not well thought out. There is plenty wrong with the world. so inventing evils is not really necessary, but its not surprising if you are in fact a conservative.

Matt Franko said...

Supports some of what Tom asserts here:

"The leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) has urged Muslims around the world to embrace jihad, claiming Islamist fighters will one day conquer Rome, the capital of Christianity.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iraq-isis-ramadan-message-we-will-conquer-christian-rome-1454924

If this thing goes full bore "religious" then REALLY watch out imo....

Ryan Harris said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ryan Harris said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
None said...

ISIS

http://www.corbettreport.com/?s=isis

None said...

heikh Imran Hosein did an interesting 2 hour talk with Alexander Dugin at Moscow State University in 2013.

It is posted on Youtube.

The English-edited version is at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5e2ag7GcLU

and the full Russian/English edition is 2 hours 30 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BbyxAhjIUI