Interesting commentary from the PJmedia folks.
The battle of / for Baghdad has begun. They're apparently approaching Baghdad International and they are definitely armed with MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense Systems) and who knows, captured Syrian ADA (Air Defense Artillery - anti-air cannon and missiles). They can negate what separates us from the rest of the world militarily, the can blunt, for a time, our Air Dominance.
In 2003, it was no real big deal when the Thunder-Runs of American armor into Baghdad, resulted in the accidental occupation of the city. This time, as Mr. Poole elucidates, is different. If ISIS/ISIL/IS WTF they call themselves, actually take the city, they have occupied the place where previously the Abbasid Caliphate resided when the. they will have occupied a capital city of a modern nation state (albeit a pretty bad one).
Al-Baghdadi is a worthy adversary, we should definitely not continue to underestimate him. It does go without saying, however that we should kill him and his senior leadership as quickly as humanly possible.
If not, the American Embassy in Iraq, the largest embassy in that part of the world, is chock full of Americans. I am not worried about here being embarrassing "last helicopter out of Saigon" images, as if ISIL has half the number of MANPADS that common wisdom says they have, then there will be pictures of a lot of flaming wreckage. Hopefully our leadership is taking steps, now, to plan the evacuation of embassy personnel.
The people at the embassy will probably not be able to access BIA (Baghdad International Airport), due to threat force action. They might have to hoof it. Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen and all of the civilian contractors (some of which are very capable trigger pullers, btw), and state department and allied civilian employees, and Iraqi's employed by us, there - we can't leave them - they'll be gruesomely murdered as an example. That's a lot of folks, possibly 16,000.
Hope senior allied planners have dusted off their copy of Xenophon's the Anabasis.
It'll be a long, nasty drive from Baghdad to Kuwait, made a bit more bearable by the USAF and USN.
Thalatta, thalatta.
Crazed American, out.
