It's War (Again)

I'm Away From Blogging For A Week And You Start A War?

Most of the wars since 1901 have been declared one way or another. The ones that weren't tended to be way too short or way too locking in legitimacy to gain popular support. At least this is what history books told you.

This week I found myself asking myself "hang on, did we just go to war? With the Islamic State?" I don't know about you, but it seemed that was exactly what has happened. It was odd that one minute Tony Abbott was going on about raising the terror alert to 'high' and the next thing you know we're sending planes and pilots and military advisers to Iraq, in order to fight the IS.

The ALP took a bipartisan stand against IS, but I don't think they really debated any point before the troops were dispatched. It was almost as if the flurry of activity to send troops and planes and bombs overwhelmed our poor little Prime Minister's head he forgot to actually declare war. Or perhaps it was simply that they do not wish to confer upon ISIS/ISIL/ /Islamic State/The Caliphate (and whatever else it wants to call itself) a proper stately status. And so it is off to war we go.

I don't want to say this too loudly but the whole blogging thing for me started about the time the West decided to go to Iraq in the first place so coming back here to blogger and seeing a war kicking off in Iraq again makes it all 'Deja Vu All Over Again'.

A lot of theories are going around about just what is going on with IS. All the beheadings and mass murder of prisoners hasn't exactly endeared themselves to the world, and the whole propaganda they are running to recruit Islamists to fight with them, is entirely hostile to just about everybody except other violent Islamists. Rumour has it that IS were the Islamists that even Al-Qaeda thought were too hard core. Now they have oil and they're selling the stuff on the black market to the tune of US$2m a day. Statehood can be lucrative if you can get yourself an Iraqi oil well.

Beheadings and mass killings in this day and age really is over the top and harks back to medieval horrors. The fact that they do this on video and post it on YouTube makes you appreciate just how far we haven't come from the year 1014AD. Hence, I understand the urge to go and blast the living daylights out of these savages - using the full savagery of modern weaponry. It just strikes me that this is one of those wars with no proper exit scenario. The other side is wanting a full apocalypse. Go Figure. Indeed, you could easily argue this is Gulf War Phase III and nothing is going to change. We're just up for more expenditure and caskets.

The most irritating thing about all this might be that Tony Abbott is banking on being a war time statesman with all of this stuff, which sits in line with the thought that patriotism is the first refuge of the scoundrel. We can begin to understand the recent budget as a 'pre-emptive' war time budget.