Cross-posted from Antiwar
I'm dating myself, but the recent hysteria over the alleged "humanitarian catastrophe" which absolutely required quick US military intervention in Iraq -- accompanied by familiar cries of "Genocide!" and numbers as high as 100,000 potential victims -- brings to mind Emily Litella. Played by Gilda Radner on "Saturday Night Live" in the 1970s -- I told you I was dating myself -- the hearing-challenged Emily would appear on SNL's "newscasts" giving her usually strong opinions on matters large and small, to be invariably corrected by the news anchor who would say something like: "No Emily, he didn't say genocide -- he said insecticide!" To which she would invariably turn her face to the audience and say "Never mind..."
Even as the professional sob sisters of the War Party were demanding US military action to "save" the Yazidis -- an obscure Iraqi religious sect whose historic home on Mount Sinjar, in Kurdistan, was ringed with ISIS jihadis -- the Pentagon was saying: "Never mind..."
"Several thousand Yazidis remain on the mountain, a senior United States official said, but not the tens of thousands who originally were believed to be there. Some of the people who remain on Mount Sinjar indicated to American forces that they considered the mountain to be a place of refuge and a home, and did not want to leave, a second United States official said."
According to the Times, while national security advisor Benjamin Rhodes was telling reporters ground troops may be on the way, and the neocons and their "progressive" enablers were working themselves into a fit of frothy-mouthed self-righteousness, eagerly anticipating another world-saving crusade, a "secret team of Marines and Special Operations forces were already on the ground" assessing the scope of the alleged crisis. And what did the Yazidis tell them? "We want to stay put!"
The lovable Yazidis, it seems, aren't as bad off as Kurdistan's public relations propagandists over at Patton Boggs -- and their media megaphones -- were telling us. According to CNN: