Not sure if any here are interested in this conflict in Syria-Iraq. But methinks, you will all be interest in the very near future. I don't observe and comment on these confrontation for purely intellectual reasons. We have to live in a world that is periodically struck through with vast disruptions. Vicki lives in a militarised area, Jen has a husband from the forces, and a son in one of the current hot spots. We all have to navigate through the consequences of these global upheavals. We have an ultimate task, yet it must be prosecuted within the sapien insanity in which we live.
"Al Qaedaism, the ideology, is stronger today than ever, thanks to the failure of the Arab spring and the battlefield has expanded from Mali to Pakistan and beyond to Australia and Europe" [veteran White House adviser and CIA analyst Bruce Riedel]
The situation in Syria-Iraq is being misread by most players. We though the Ukraine-Russia stouch was worse, and it may yet turn out that way. But if you just think for a moment about how the US responded to the Russian involvement in Cuba not so long ago, you can understand how Russia feels about Western/Nato encroachment into satellite nations around it. So long as the West pulls back from that strategy, Russia may just calm down, as did the US with Cuba. Or it may not...
Let's consider a few facts. In the Levant region, the arms sales now top $50 billion. Saudi Arabia has just donated a billion dollars of military hardware to Lebanon. Lebanon is about half Muslim, divided equally between Shia and Sunni. They are currently under attack from ISIL in the form of prisoner exchange pressures, and have already seen incursions from ISIL.
Consider this one fact, that since the beginning of August US bombing in Iraq, intelligence services state that as many as 6,000 volunteers have flocked to join Islamic State. Other experts believe that if the US continue to bomb Nusra Front, which is al-Qaeda affiliated yet opposed to Islamic State, it will drive many more Sunnis from Syria and Iraq to their support.
Also consider that US bombing is futile without potent ground troops, and that local states have hardly lifted a finger to help the US, probably because many of them are actually incompetent militarily, their officer corps being jobs of privilege.
The previous UN negotiator in Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi: "There is a serious risk that the entire region will blow up. The conflict is not going to stay inside Syria. It will spill over into the region. It's already destabilising Lebanon [where there are] 1.5 million refugees – that represents one-third of the population – if it were Germany, it would be the equivalent of 20 million people. It will become another Somalia. It will not be divided, as many have predicted. It's going to be a failed state, with warlords all over the place."
Dr Anthony Cordesman, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies:"you can surely count on people to not understand that intervening to deal with a few thousand people can displace hundreds of thousands". There are so many scenarios that could trigger a global involvement. The situation is highly volatile now, and IS seem to sit in the middle delighting in their own enhancement through emotional aggravation of the Western countries.