Category Archives: Foreign Policy

The war against ISIL/ISIS/IS continues to muddle along.  So, it looks like the Obama administration decided to put more effort into helping the Kurds fight for Kobani, whilst ISIL/ISIS/IS decided to strike on towards Baghdad.  We like our fights broken down into good guys vs bad guys, but in that region of the world, a lot fall into the bad guy group, very few into the good guy group, and a disconcerting number switch sides, hold dual loyalties, or can easily be bought, making choosing sides decidedly difficult.  Turkey finally agreed to allow aid for the Kurds at Kobani to flow through Turkey.  However, now the Syrian Kurds are angry about that.  Jamie Dettmer at Global Security.org reports:

“Syrian Kurdish leaders are pushing back on Turkey’s plan to allow Kurdish Peshmerga forces from northern Iraq to transit Turkish territory and to enter the besieged Syrian border town of Kobani to help in its defense.”

“Mideast politics is notoriously complex and among the most Byzantine involves the Kurdish political parties who vie for top-dog status and compete for the loyalty of all Kurds across Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran.”

The Obama administration charged into this war as clueless about the realities on the ground as they consistently demonstrated with their “prescient analysis” (that’s a joke) of the Arab Spring and choosing winners and losers there.   We now are arming US designated terrorists in Kobani to fight the ISIL/ISIS/IS terrorists.  We are still searching for elusive “Syrian moderates” from which to build a paramilitary force to be the “boots on the ground” in Syria to fight ISIL/ISIS/IS, an endeavor which US Central Command commander, Lloyd Austin says will take time.  From McClatchyDC,  “U.S. general: ‘It’ll take time’ to train new Syria force, reclaim Iraq turf, defeat Islamic State”:

“U.S. officials have said the United States is only at the very beginning of creating a new Syrian paramilitary, which will be handpicked from the country’s hodgepodge of rebel forces whose first concern isn’t the Islamic State but their long struggle to overthrow the government of President Bashar Assad.

Austin certainly didn’t raise hopes about the prospects of a streamlined Syrian ground partner emerging anytime soon; at one point he referred to the goal as “hopefully, a force that we can train in Syria.”

The message couched in Austin’s remarks was clear: The existing Syrian rebel structure is untenable and the United States aims to build its own Syrian proxy – only this time, enemy No. 1 is the Islamic State instead of Assad. It remains unclear how many Syrian rebels would sign up on those terms. It’s even less clear how many of the current rebels the United States is courting, given their repeated battlefield coordination with the local al Qaida affiliate and other jihadists.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/10/17/243802_us-general-itll-take-time-to-train.html?sp=/99/200/111/&rh=1#storylink=cpy

At National Review today there’s a piece by Matthew Continetti, “Accept No Substitutions“, pounding the same old neocon drum for more military adventurism in the Mid-East.  Like many with no military experience, Continetti falls prey to the Kagans overly simplistic strategic posturing:

“If only. A future president — and with the way Obama is handling the Middle East, we will be dealing with the Islamic State and other hazards for many years indeed — needs to take a look at the strategic plan devised by Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and Kimberly Kagan and Jessica Lewis of the Institute for the Study of War.

“U.S. forces need to play the role of honest broker once again, as they did in 2007 and 2008,” the Kagans wrote recently in the Los Angeles Times. “But they can only play that role if they are present.” The Kagans say 25,000 troops are necessary to reverse enemy gains.”

I posted the first comment there, under my other alias, “mhere”, rambling on rather longish, giving my two cents worth:

“American ground troops most certainly can provide a winning “military” strategy against ISIS, but herein lies the same dilemma we’ve faced since removing the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Gadaffi from power – there is no political solution in sight to insure stability in the aftermath. The Kagans and their neocon friends brought us the “cakewalk” in the Iraq prognostications and recently penned a power point plan in the Weekly Standard, http://www.weeklystandard.com/….”

“A year ago, Frederick Kagan wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/…, urging arming the ever elusive Syrian “moderates”. Both Kagans are supposed military “experts”, but his concern in this piece was the flagging morale of the Syrian rebels, not the morale of our American troops. Both failed to address the more important strategic dilemma in Syria, which ISIS now glaringly highlights – removing odious secular autocrats in the Mid-East isn’t a challenge for US military might. However, leaving gaping power vacuums only exacerbates the “providing safe havens for terrorists”, which rests as a real threat to our national security. Here’s the rub, that no one talks about – Assad posed no real threat to American national security. Certainly he does Iran’s bidding, but he wasn’t making pronouncements inciting “Death to America”. Our President lied about the WMD intelligence in 2012, assigning blame to Assad before an investigation was even conducted and reporters beyond Seymour Hersh should be asking, “Whose Sarin?” (google his article by that title and then research that one).”

“Unless our “strategic thinking” moves beyond simplistic power point presentations, such as the Kagans plan, we will remain mired in Mid-East quagmires. Our military abilities far exceed our long-range strategic thinking and defeating a foe is far easier than “preserving states”, so perhaps we need to think more about the end goals. Military occupations unto perpetuity will only fuel the jihadist movement.

If we sit back and let ISIS run its course, then those Shia and Sunni power-brokers in the neighborhood will be forced to act. We should secure our borders, work toward energy independence, rebuild our military, which suffers from over a decade of wear and tear, and work on some long-range strategic-brainstorming. I don’t want America to be the “mercenary” air force for either side in the larger Sunni-Shia battle, which is what is happening now. In the current configuration, we’ve switched sides and are providing air support to help Assad regain ground in Syria, because he has “boots on the ground” ready to capitalize on our air strikes against ISIS. The mullahs in Iran probably are sitting there laughing at how easily we’ve been drawn in by ISIS propaganda videos.”

“Our troops deserve better strategic-thinking than the Kagans simplistic power point presentations and war by disingenuous slogans. No more cakewalks, shock and awe, winning the hearts and minds, please!”

Another commenter, verity, followed my comment with this much shorter, but very succinct insight:

“Look, when something like ISIS happens;

– You first send out a scout to the region to sound out the Arabs.
– Your scout comes back and says to your POTUS: “No life in these guys, forget it.”
– You gracefully bow out, and announce to the whole world that the Arabs don’t intend to do anything.
– Then the Arabs either start to shriek their denial, or they continue to comfortably sit on their $hit.
– If you collect some serious shrieks, you subscribe them to your coalition -and not on easy terms.

Then, you have something going. Your POTUS goes up there and says: “The Arabs have a strategy, we decided to help.””