Pages Menu

Categories Menu

Posted on Jun 17, 2014 in War College

FLASHPOINTS: The Crises in Iraq, Ukraine and Pakistan

FLASHPOINTS: The Crises in Iraq, Ukraine and Pakistan

By Armchair General

The crisis in Iraq with ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) militants seizing large portions of the country, the continuing crisis between Russia and Ukraine, and the actions of al Qaeda-linked Taliban terrorists in Pakistan are the three world trouble areas identified in Lt. Col. (ret) John Antal’s FLASHPOINTS of June 17, 2014.

Click here to download the pdf from Armchair General‘s FLASHPOINTS page.

John Antal has frequently authored articles for Armchair General, including “Wars Without End: the Challenge of ‘Arab Spring'” and “Flashpoint Gaza Analysis.” He has authored or co-authored numerous books. His latest is 7 Leadership Lessons of the American Revolution: The Founding Fathers, Liberty, and the Struggle for Independence. Read Armchair General‘s exclusive interview, “7 Questions for John Antal on ‘7 Leadership Lessons of the American Revolution.’

{default}

Get your alert as each new FLASHPOINTS is published on Armchair General! Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Get our RSS (the orange-colored icon on the left side of the page). In addition to Col. Antal’s FLASHPOINTS, you’ll receive notice when we post monthly articles by Carlo D’Este and Peter Suciu and our Tactics 101 series, as well as articles by other writers including Ralph Peters and Lt. Col. (ret) Jeffrey Paulding.

3 Comments

  1. Find me one American outside of chicken hawks like Kristol or McCain who want us to get embroiled in another war in Iraq. I’m not willing to sacrifice one more American life to the tribal warfare that has gone on there for thousands of years. There is nothing we will ever be able to do in that part of the world that will cause these fanatics to come together.

    • I’m one. As long as we are willing to fight it like WWII. Mission first and not worry about collateral damage. I was in Desert Storm, Operation Restore Hope, have been to Iraq 3 times and Afghanistan once as a USMC Infantrymen and would gladly go back again IF AND ONLY IF we can fight to win and not to just contain. You can not win a war if you are more worried about offending then winning. Its vary simple if you are not willing to kill every kid in a daycare if it also means killing your enemy then don’t go to war over what ever it is you are thinking about, because you will lose. By the way owner enemy’s do have the stomach for this. There is an interview with a member of a WWII RAF bomber crew in the series The World at War and he hit it right on the head when he says “If it easier to kill the factory worker in his bed then at work and old granny Snitinburger get the chop the well it’s just her tough luck” I may not have that quite quit right but that’s the just of it. War is ugly and can only be won if you can fire bomb Dresden or use a flamethrower on a Japanese machine gun bunker that won’t surrender if you can’t or won’t then don’t even try it on a small scale because you will lose.

      • Problem is, you cannot win a war in that part of the world. This is a sectarian, tribla conflict that has been going on for thousands of years. I’m sorry, but if you think we can “win” over there you are sadly mistaken. It’s been tried(see 2003-11) and failed. Old saying. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. There is nothing we can do by getting back in the fray there except produce even more hatred for America than already exists. I’ll ask, if the shoe was on the other foot and we had a civil war here, would you welcome intervention by some country from halfway around the world?

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Shadows of World War I Continue to Haunt Modern Iraq | Armchair General | Armchair General Magazine - We Put YOU in Command! - […] Shiite forces for control of the country.  (See Lt. Col., ret., John Antal’s FLASHPOINTS of June 17, 2014, for…