HOLY WAR JUST WAR

The physical caliphate was being destroyed, and in his mind's eye soldiers ducked from building to building seeking cover. There was panic, there were dying days, there were ruins all around. Running for cover.

How odd that the same amphetamines that were destroying the country towns and underclass enclaves of Australia, the pesticide so ably used by the military authorities to eliminate the less of the people, was the same as that being used by Islamic State, fighting and dying in a kind of heightened insanity on a battlefield which, thanks to the new technologies, became a mind map of the civilisation, spread everywhere.

Holy War. Just War. 

The debate, this debate, would become another footnote in a blood stained history.

The caliphate of the soul was well intact; consolidating territorial gains, spreading.

Ably assisted by their colleagues in the West.

Eaten out from within.

The jihadis, the Jesuits, they fought their Holy Wars of old.

There was a new god in town, or an ancient god reborn.

In the flux and flow of the international stage, the utterly manipulated narrative, there was a staged diversion, with saber ratting against North Korea 

We've won the war, we've beaten the caliphate. Now look the other way. We don't want you to see the consequences of our actions, our bombs. If only they were a we, and not a terror all their own.

Overt manipulation. No eyes to see. No ears to hear.

Lies. The Big Lies.

The infinite malleability, or was it gullibility, of humans.

We are here to protect you.
Breathtaking hypocrisy.

We are here to liberate you.

If only it was true.

Those few lonely souls on the perimeter of action, seeking Enlightenmnet through a divine mismanagement, struggled against a modern day darkness, ignorance. And the flames went out.

All around, he had built a perimeter of burning fuel.

He warned all, do not cross.

A frigid sun on cold seas, the bodies of the mujaheddin lying in the heat drenched streets, their sacrifice, their cruelty, their bringing into common usage the term ultra-violence, beheadings, drownings, crucifixions, stonings, immolation, ever more barbaric, more inventive slaughter, and now, the latest, greatest theatre of terror, courtesy of Western bombing, a brutally absurd rendering of vicious imagery, retaliation, breathtaking hypocrisy.

Either it was a trap or it was deliberate.

Connect all the dots.

Either way, they won. As pain and sacrifice seared the holy warriors into the annals of history.

The dead litter the ground.

In Mosul, Iraqi soldiers applaud as another Islamic State fighter is shot, and writhes on the ground. They had died in their thousands. Suicide bombers. Martyrs. Those who believed, who could feel divine retribution throbbing through their veins, in the God of All The Worlds.

Everything was in ruins, dust, smoke, uncannily like the aftermath of a nuclear attack. 

The Western pubic, war weary and confounded by the open contradictions, wishing to believe their governments were good when they clearly were not, did not care. 

War, holy war, was just another flickering piece of infotainment in the absurd clutter of 21st century consciousness, read on a mobile device.

Concerning justice in the conduct of holy war, Saint Augustine of Hippo, regarded as the first and most significant of Christian philosophers, wrote in the early years of the 5th Century AD, that wars, once begun, must be fought in a manner which:

1. represents a proportional response to the wrong to be avenged, with violence being constrained within the limits of military necessity;
2. discriminates between proper objects of violence (that is, combatants) and noncombatants, such as women, children, the elderly, the clergy, and so forth.; and
3. observes good faith in its interactions with the enemy, by scrupulously observing treaties and not prosecuting the war in a treacherous manner.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4666636/Iraqi-commander-says-300-IS-fighters-holed-Mosul.html

ISIS hold just 600 square yards of territory in Mosul - an area holding 300 of its fighters an Iraqi commander has revealed.

The extremists have been surrounded in a small enclave in the Old City amid fears many of the buildings are still packed with civilians.

Up to 1,500 trapped residents flee with every every 100 yard advance by government forces.

Iraqi forces moved to besiege the Old City before launching their attack in order to prevent ISIS fighters from fleeing to neighboring Syria.

But Lieutenant General Sami al-Aridi of Iraq's special forces said hundreds of militants still managed to escape from the Old City alone.

'They just shave their beards and walk out,' al-Aridi said. 'Just yesterday we captured two among a group of women and children.'

http://www.msf.org/en/article/iraq-women-and-children-among-scores-war-wounded-treated-msf-hospital-west-mosul

Extreme levels of conflict and violence in the besieged city of Mosul, Iraq – including airstrikes, bombardment, suicide attacks and gunshots – are taking a devastating toll on residents of the embattled Old City.

In less than two weeks since officially opening its hospital in West Mosul, one of only two hospitals functioning in this part of the city, Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF) has treated over 100 patients for war-related injuries, including more than 25 children and 20 women. However, MSF fears that only a small fraction of residents are able to access medical assistance on time and that many are dying on the battlefield.

“Every day, our teams are treating patients from the Old City, many of whom are women and children,” says Stephanie Remion, MSF emergency coordinator for West Mosul.

“The stories of hardship our patients tell us are impossible to put into words. We see patients with war-related injuries ranging from shrapnel wounds, gunshots and blast injuries, to burns and broken bones from collapsing structures."

“Despite the tremendous efforts undertaken by staff in front line trauma stabilisation points and by ambulance drivers, the numbers of patients we are receiving are comparatively low relative to the unknown thousands of residents thought to be trapped in the conflict zone. Our greatest fear is that many of the most urgent cases are dying on the battlefield, unable to access life-saving medical assistance.”