So many uninformed and worried posters. I don’t know where to start. Here’s something to think about.
-The Iraqi military has not fought so far because they are Sunni soldiers deployed in Sunni areas, facing a Sunni militant group. Their government is a pluralistic one in which they are not the majority. So they desert to join the militants -or flee. To some of them they believe they have higher standing in ISIS than in the Iraqi government.
-When the militants near Baghdad they will begin to encounter large groups of Shia which live south and east of Baghdad. The Shia will fight to protect the government they dominate and to prevent persecution by the Sunni.
So yes, this is a civil war with the Sunnis as the aggressor -just like the insurgency we encountered when there. The Shia and Kurds will fight the Sunni militants.
Many Sunnis will stand this out. They understand that to join the militants will place them in a conflict of annihilation from which their families will receive no benefit.
You make valid points but the shocking fact is that in actual fact the Sunnis are the US’ de facto allies everywhere else except in Iraq.
The opposition the US is supporting in Syria are the same people who are rolling towards Baghdad. The ISIL have opened up a new road into eastern Syria to send all those Humvees, AK 47s, trucks, uniforms, flak jackets and $400 million very decently left by the Iraqi government forces lying on the streets of Mosul.
The ISIL don’t look at the current borders, they probably aren’t that interested in fighting the Kurds or even the Shiites if it comes to that they are carving out their own new Sunni state from the ruins of what had been Iraq and Syria and the US is helping them on the Syrian side of the border.
It’s the most cockamanie, schizophrenic foreign policy the world has ever seen. And it all boils down to the fact that America’s key ally in the Middle East is the Sunni Saudis who are bankrolling all of this and happily watching as the US does excatly want the Sunnis want in their blind hatred of Iran which is the arch enemy of the Saudis.
Here’s the thing though it wasn’t Iran who attacked the US on 911 or who has been any threat to the US since about 1985, the biggest threat to US security is our bestest buddies the Saudis!
I simply can’t make head nor tail of it.
Excellent summary.