[Alas Babylon!]

There’s a timeline that puts the whole thing together. Last week, some Iranian militia called Hezbollah (not the same as the one in Lebanon) mortared a couple of American FOBs and that killed an American contractor.

Trump then ordered a retaliatory strike, Sunday night, and F-15Es, Strike Eagles (which carry a Adam Schitt ton of ordnance), hit several of these Hezbollah camps in Iraq and Syria, killing a bunch (even their Iranian “vice commander”) and blowing up a huge ammo dump.

The Iraqi president got all hot under the collar and yesterday condemn our strikes. This really fanned the flames, as a few hours later, they staged protest that turned into an embassy takedown attempt. My sense is the Iraqi government was at fault and approved the initial protest, which quickly got out-of-hand. It was only after Trump called him and told him to knock it off or the US would “deal” with it that the Iraqi gov. sent their national guard in to stop it.

F the Iraqi President, the “protestors, Hezbollah and the Iranians! But in my opinion, the embassy attack is the Iraqi President’s fault.

[Zhang Fei]

[F the Iraqi President, the “protestors, Hezbollah and the Iranians! But in my opinion, the embassy attack is the Iraqi President’s fault.]

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That would be Prime Minister. The President is a figurehead. I’d say it’s worse - the PM has been taking Iranian money but, in the way the bribed don’t necessarily stay bribed if they have interests that don’t 100% coincide with their paymaster, he is vacillating between obeying his Iranian paymaster and avoiding a potential JDAM targeting his family residence while he’s there. Because he may feel Trump will have no compunction about wiping out his clan, if embassy guards are massacred. As they will be, short of saturation air strikes against Iraqi army attacks. The history of Middle Eastern back-stabbing is a long and illustrious one, starting long before Islam (let alone the Iraqi state) and going all the way to the top. Fathers killed sons, sons killed fathers and siblings killed siblings in fights over the throne. This could end up, for the Marines at the embassy, like a modern version of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand - they might need to fight their way out against Iraq’s entire army.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Thousand