Heh
Israel
“The utility of America’s residual power in this situation is almost extinguished.”
J. E. Dyer: Like it never even happened: Tikrit and the unwriting of modern history
This is an excellent long discussion of the historical background of today’s struggle for Iraq between ISIS and the modern Persian empire:
The eschatology of revolution and Western decline
All of this history is recent, in Persian terms. The ancient Persian Empire was old by the time Herodotus the Greek, father of Western history, walked the earth, 2,400 years ago. There are much older ghosts in the plain of Zahab but the Islamic conquest of the 630s is the “break” that counts: the one that set Persia and modern Iran on course for their rendezvous with 2015.
Three and a half centuries after the Treaty of Zahab, a revolutionary Iran, sensitized to eschatological signs, found herself facing serious danger from an independent and radical Iraq. The pathway to Baghdad suddenly had geo-military significance again.
Movie Review: Above and Beyond
This entertaining 90-minute documentary tells the story of a group of idealistic war veterans, mostly but not all Jews, mostly from the USA and other English-speaking countries, who volunteered on the Jewish side during the Israeli war of independence in 1948 and helped to form the nucleus of what became the Israeli Air Force.
Furnish on Netanyahu, Nukes, and Iranian Eschatology
I have just posted a guest post from Dr Tim Furnish on Zenpundit.
Dr Furnish holds a doctorate in Islamic history, and “wrote the book” — Holiest Wars
Is He or Isn’t He?
Caroline Glick says: Yes. Worth reading.