The Lions Of Tikrit, Holding Off The Safavids And The Rafidite Dogs

How do Sunni Arabs see the handful — no more than a few hundred –of  ISIS fanatics who have managed to hold off, for a month, the 30,000 troops, mostly Shi’ite militiamen, with some Iraqi army forces, and some Iranian advisors too, who started their campaign to retake Tikrit from the Islamic State nearly a month ago, on March 2, and promised, kept promising, it would all be over in a few days. And this “it would all be over in a few days” was repeated every few days.But Tikrit was not taken.  Now the Americans, responding to a request from the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government, have been bombing. And still the ISIS forces remain, quite ready and eager to die.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the likelihood that this Great Battle of Tikrit might become, not just for Islamic State members, but for others too,  a Sunni Alamo, or possibly, given that there are about 300 men left, a Muslim Thermopylae. Judging by the comments at Al Jazeera put up today under a piece about Tikrit, that mythologizing has already started. And since that month of holding-off forces ten times their size has already passed, even if Tikrit falls to the Shi’a tomorrow, it’s too late to prevent that inspiring tale of an Alamo or Thermopylae, Sunni version, from entering, and staying, in many Sunni minds.