H/t Vermont Loon Watch.
Archive for the ‘Foreign policy’ category
Cartoon of the day
May 28, 2015Filling the Vacuum in Syria
May 28, 2015Filling the Vacuum in Syria, The Gatestone Institute, Yaakov Lappin, May 28,2015
- The idea that, because Sunni and Shi’ite elements are locked in battle with one another today, they will not pose a threat to international security tomorrow, is little more than wishful thinking.
- The increased Iranian-Hezbollah presence needs to be closely watched.
- A policy of turning a blind eye to the Iran-led axis, including Syria’s Assad regime, appears to be doing more harm than good.
As the regime of Bashar Assad continues steadily to lose ground in Syria; and as Assad’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah, deploy in growing numbers to Syrian battlegrounds to try to stop the Assad regime’s collapse, the future of this war-torn, chaotic land looks set to be dominated by radical Sunni and Shi’ite forces.
The presence of fundamentalist Shi’ite and Sunni forces fighting a sectarian-religious war to the death is a sign of things to come for the region: when states break down, militant entities enter to seize control. The idea that, because Sunni and Shi’ite elements are locked in battle with one another today, they will not pose a threat to international security tomorrow, is little more than wishful thinking.
The increased presence of the radicals in Syria will have a direct impact on international security, even though the West seems more fixated on looking only at threats posed by the Islamic State (ISIS), and disregards the possibly greater threat posed by the Iranian-led axis. It is Iran that is at the center of the same axis, so prominent in entangling Syria.
The threat from ISIS in Syria and Iraq to the West is obvious: Its successful campaigns and expanding transnational territory is set to become an enormous base of jihadist international terrorist activity, a launching pad for overseas attacks, and the basis for a propaganda recruitment campaign.
It has already become a magnet for European Muslim volunteers. Their return to their homes as battle-hardened jihadists poses a clear danger to those states’ national security.
Yet the threat from the Iranian-led axis, highly active in Syria, is more severe. With Iran, a threshold nuclear regional power, as its sponsor, this axis plans to subvert and topple stable Sunni governments in the Middle East and attack Israel. Iran’s axis also has its sights set on eventually sabotaging the international order, to promote Iran’s “Islamic revolution.”
This is the axis upon which the Assad regime has become utterly dependent for its continued survival.
Today, the radical, caliphate-seeking Sunni organization, ISIS, controls half of Syria, while hardline Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah units can be found everywhere in Syria, together with their sponsors, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) personnel, fighting together with the Assad regime’s beleaguered and worn-out military forces.
The increased Iranian-Hezbollah presence needs to be closely watched. According to international media reports, an IRGC-Hezbollah convoy in southern Syria, made up of senior operatives involved in the setting up of a base designed to launch attacks on the Golan Heights, was struck and destroyed by Israel earlier this year. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan too hasreason to be concerned.
Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah fighters are deeply involved in Syria’s civil war. (Image source: Hezbollah propaganda video)
Syria has become a region into which weapons, some highly advanced, flow in ever greater numbers, allowing Hezbollah to acquire guided missiles, and allowing ISIS and the Al-Nusra Front to add to their growing stockpile of weaponry.
Other rebel organizations, some sponsored by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar, are also wielding influence in Syria. These groups represent an effort by Sunni states to exert their own influence there.
Despite all the efforts to support it, the Assad regime suffered another recent setback when ISIS seized the ancient city Palmyra in recent days, making an ISIS advance on Damascus more feasible. To the west, near the Lebanese border, Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the Al-Nursa Front, also made gains. It threatened to enter Lebanon, prompting Hezbollah to launch a counter-offensive to take back those areas.
These developments provide a blueprint for the future of Syria: A permanently divided territory, where conquests and counter-offensives continue to rage, and the scene of an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe, producing waves of millions of refugees that could destabilize Syria’s neighbors. Syria is set to remain a land controlled by warring sectarian factions, some of whom plan to spread their destructive influence far beyond Syria.
Events in Syria have shown that the notion that air power can somehow stop ISIS’s advance is a fantasy. More importantly, they have also illustrated that Washington’s policy of cooperation with Iran in a possible “grand bargain” to stabilize the region, while failing to take a firmer stance against the civilian-slaughtering Assad regime, is equally fruitless.
A policy of turning a blind eye to the Iran-led axis, including Syria’s Assad regime, appears to be doing more harm than good.
WH Admits Need To ‘Adapt Our Strategy’ Against IS, Contradicts Previous Admin Statements
May 27, 2015WH Admits Need To ‘Adapt Our Strategy’ Against IS, Contradicts Previous Admin Statements, Washington Free Beacon via You Tube, May 27, 2015
(“It’s more complicated than that.” Wash, rinse and repeat– DM)
Obama’s Islamic State strategy sparks doubt, resentment among Pentagon officials
May 27, 2015Obama’s Islamic State strategy sparks doubt, resentment among Pentagon officials, Washington Times, Rowan Scarborough, May 26, 2015
Beneath the glowing battle reports about Iraq from U.S. military spokesmen in recent months, there remains a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction among the Pentagon rank and file with the Obama administration’s Islamic State strategy.
“What strategy?” asked a Pentagon official involved in counterterrorism analysis. “We are now floating along, reacting to ISIS,” using a common acronym for the Islamic State.
This source said the military has a plan for introducing ground troops and defeating the Islamist group, but the belief is that President Obama will never activate it.
Whether this unhappiness has reached the inner sanctum of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is unclear. In public, the military leadership says it is squarely behind the strategy of limited U.S.-led airstrikes coinciding with the rebuilding of the Iraq army for all the ground fighting.
But a Washington Times spot check of department officials and people who interact with the Pentagon reveals deep-seated doubts.
Photo by: © STRINGER Iraq / Reuters Iraq’s Shiite paramilitaries claimed to have taken charge of driving the Islamic State out from the western province of Anbar. However, Pentagon officials decry what they see as an unfocused White House plan to rout the terror group. (Reuters)
The Islamic State’s rout of Ramadi on May 18 exposed more than the Iraqi army’s lack of will to fight, as Defense Secretary Ashton Carter bluntly put it over the weekend.
After months of U.S. and coalition airstrikes on hundreds of Islamic State targets, after U.S. surveillance and intelligence collection, and with senior American officers advising Iraqis at a joint command center, the battlefield outcome still was no better than the rout of Mosul 11 months ago.
A former official who is frequently in the Pentagon said, “The building is very guarded about what they say, but clearly the White House is running the campaign, which has them furious.”
This source said combat pilots can loiter over a target for hours before approval comes to strike it. Sometimes approval never comes.
“The targeting requires immaculate rules of engagement, which means they cannot drop if there is a possibility of collateral damage [civilian deaths],” the former official said.
U.S. Central Command’s list of airstrikes around Ramadi showed a smattering of tactical strikes, not concentrated air power.
On May 18, the day Ramadi fell, Central Command listed three targets as being struck around Ramadi — two tactical units and an Islamic State staging area. Destroyed there were an armored vehicle, an excavator and a resupply vehicle.
On the previous day, as Islamic State fighters were taking control of Ramadi, eight airstrikes hit targets near the city. They were three tactical units, eight buildings, two armored vehicles, two mortars, an ammunition storage area and a command center.
“This is worse than pathetic,” the former official said.
Another annoying development, the source said, is the lack of American arms making their way from the Shiite-led national government in Baghdad to Iraqi Kurdish forces in the north. They have proven to be one of the few Iraqi units willing to take on the Islamic State.
The former official said a commitment of U.S. special operations forces and some infantry “could defeat the Islamic State in weeks.”
“But then what?” the source asked, noting that the Shiite-dominated government has badly mismanaged the post-U.S. environment.
“I have never seen such disgruntlement before,” the source said of the mood in the Pentagon.
Another official said a constant theme inside the Pentagon is that the White House does not seem committed to winning. The frequent public relations spin is that this will be a long process to take down the Islamic State when, in fact, officers say, it does not have to be.
“They question whether the U.S. has any interests at stake in Iraq,” this official said. “If we do, they expect Obama to make the case.”
The Iraqi government announced Monday that it has launched a new counteroffensive aimed at retaking Ramadi, the capital of the Sunni-dominated Anbar province. U.S. Marines in the mid-2000s, in an alliance with Sunni tribal leaders, fought a protracted counterinsurgency to rid the western region of al Qaeda terrorists.
So far, the Sunni role in trying to expel the Islamic State, a Sunni extremist army, does not seem as robust. That is why Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is now relying on Iran-directed Shiite militias to fight in Anbar, as he did in the assault on the Sunni-majority city of Tikrit.
The former defense official said that if one wants to get a sense of the unhappiness inside the Pentagon, they should listen to the few retired senior generals who are speaking out.
One is retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Mr. Obama. Mr. Flynn is urging a much more aggressive approach to the Islamic State and jihadis worldwide.
“Unless the United States takes dramatically more action than we have done so far in Iraq, the fractious, largely Shiite-composed units that make up the Iraqi army are not likely to be able, by themselves, to overwhelm a Sunni stronghold like Mosul, even though they outnumber the enemy by ten to one,” he wrote in Politico. “The United States must be prepared to provide far more combat capabilities and enablers such as command and control, intelligence, logistics and fire support, to name just a few things.”
Globally, he said, “We must engage the violent Islamists wherever they are, drive them from their safe havens and kill them. There can be no quarter and no accommodation.”
Another is retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, who was Mr. Obama’s Central Command chief until May 2013, a time when the Islamic State had not yet established itself in Iraqi territory.
“The bottom line is we do not have a global strategy,” Mr. Mattis said May 13 at the Heritage Foundation. “Right now we have an America that is starting to reduce its role in the world. That’s not good.”
He noted that Mr. Obama last August said “we don’t have a strategy yet” for defeating the Islamic State. Mr. Mattis said that statement still holds true today. “We don’t really have a good strategy right now,” he said.
He added, “This is what would be called a poor grade at the National War College, to say the least. They would have flunked you.”
Robert Gates, Mr. Obama’s first defense secretary, told MSNBC, referring to the U.S. in Middle East, “We’re basically sort of playing this day to day.”
Mr. Carter took a big step over the weekend in beginning to bluntly blame the Iraqis for failing to hold Ramadi.
“What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight,” the defense secretary told CNN. “They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight.”
The White House immediately launched damage control so as not to offend Mr. Abadi’s government.
“The recent universal statement by the [secretary of defense] that the Iraqis don’t have the will to fight is unhelpful,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who led the training of Iraqi troops during the war. “‘Will to fight’ is a complex phenomenon. Why do they fight like hell in some circumstances and not others? That is the real issue.”
Mr. Dubik has been playing close attention to starts and stops of the campaign against the Islamic State as an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.
“The fall of Ramadi is a blow to the Iraqi counteroffensive, and it complicates resupply and reinforcements to Al Asad [air base],” he said. “It shows how resilient ISIS is, and how difficult the counteroffensive to re-establish the Iraq-Syria border and re-establish Iraq’s political sovereignty will be. There is no guarantee that Iraq will be successful. And if they’re not, U.S. security interests in the region, and beyond, will suffer.”
U.S. Central Command remains upbeat. On Tuesday, Marine Brig. Gen. Thomas Weidley, the war command’s chief of staff, issued a statement referring to recent setbacks as temporary.
“Positive steps and effects are occurring throughout the battle space, which, in combination, are encouraging signs of the operational-level progress to date within the campaign,” he said.
Obama’s Iraq War
May 26, 2015Obama’s Iraq War, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 26, 2015
We all know Bush’s Iraq War, but we don’t know much about Obama’s Iraq War. Republicans fight wars. Democrats engage in police actions, impose No-Fly Zones and provide security for humanitarian missions. They don’t do anything as vulgar as fight wars. That would be warmongering.
Even by the war-shy standards of Democrats, Obama’s word games with war have been something else.
Obama’s wars are complex shell games. When he goes to war, he claims that it was at the request of a third party, which was actually fulfilling his request to file a request that it later takes back, based on a pretext that turns out to be false, to carry out a mission that turns out to be a pretext for regime change.
At least that’s how it happened in Libya.
When he inherits a war, he changes its name and announces a withdrawal while leaving a heavy military presence in place, before then actually withdrawing. If the first withdrawal doesn’t result in a disaster, because it never really took place, he can’t be blamed for the disaster that begins after the real withdrawal. After all the original withdrawal worked, so withdrawing can’t be the problem.
That’s what he did in Iraq. It’s what he plans to do in Afghanistan.
Obama’s Iraq War doesn’t exist as a distinct entity because the administration has gone to great lengths to distance itself from any appearance of being involved in it. When his original promise of withdrawing within sixteen months proved unfeasible, he declared that “By Aug. 31, 2010, America’s combat mission in Iraq would end.”
The war was renamed from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn. The 50,000 soldiers became members of “Advise and Assist Brigades”. When two soldiers were killed and nine wounded on that September, they did not die as part of a combat mission. When two members of the Puerto Rico Army National Guard were killed by an IED in January, they died as advisers and assistants for New Dawn.
Five years later, America’s combat mission in Iraq is still going on. We’re still advising, assisting and bombing. And there’s no new dawn anywhere in sight.
Operation Iraqi Freedom was a name that made liberal elites turn up their noses, but it succinctly expressed a purpose and a goal. New Dawn could have been anything from a brand of soap to a cult. It was a cheerfully meaningless name and that was its purpose. It created a sense of progress without any actual progress having been made. Like everything Obama did, it was a shiny box with nothing inside.
When it came to Iraq, Obama tried to fool everyone; selling the anti-war crowd an immediate withdrawal while promising everyone else a sensible withdrawal once the mission was finished.
And he managed to lie to everyone.
When the real withdrawal came, it was followed by an onslaught of Al Qaeda car bombs. More significantly it turned Al Qaeda in Iraq into the first franchise to be able to claim to have beaten America.
Obama had been so set on withdrawal that he had paid little attention to Al Qaeda in Iraq’s resurgence. Its continued activity in Iraq combined with the withdrawal allowed the terror group to create the myth that it had defeated the United States and driven it out of Iraq. And Obama allowed the myth to grow.
Al Qaeda around the world was looking for new tactics and inspirations. While Obama insisted that Al Qaeda had to be urgently fought in Afghanistan, its presence there was light. It was much more of a threat in Yemen, a locale that would become the source of a number of terrorist attacks directed at America and Europe, and a major player in the current civil war there, as well as back in Iraq.
Obama insisted that Bush had taken his eyes off the ball by ignoring Afghanistan, but he was the one who had taken his eyes off the ball by focusing on Afghanistan and ignoring Iraq. His eagerness to get away from Iraq created a situation in which the United States could target Al Qaeda in Yemen and Pakistan, but not in Iraq where it was strongest. This policy turned Iraq into an Al Qaeda haven.
His unwillingness to confront Al Qaeda in Iraq added to the myth that it had won and that the United States was too frightened of it to fight it. The myth had some elements of truth to it.
Obama was afraid, but he wasn’t afraid of Al Qaeda. He was afraid of Iraq.
September 11 had badly panicked Democrats who suddenly saw themselves losing the post-Cold War narrative of soft power and multilateral diplomacy. Their feigned patriotism only lasted long enough for them to spot a weakness by seizing on Al Qaeda’s campaign of terror in Iraq to turn the narrative around. The last thing Obama wanted to do was risk undermining the anti-war victory of the left in Iraq.
The left needed a defeat and so it created one in Iraq. The Islamists needed a victory so they derived it from Iraq. Osama bin Laden and the Democrats were both reading texts on Vietnam and drawing the same conclusions. But the Democrats did not understand the implications of those conclusions.
By positioning Iraq as a war that America had lost, they also made it a war that Al Qaeda had won.
Al Qaeda had thrived in Afghanistan because it could claim to have beaten the USSR. Now it was thriving in Iraq because it could claim to have beaten America. The transformation of Al Qaeda in Iraq into the Islamic State would become a self-fulfilling prophecy powered by propaganda and American apathy.
Obama had made Iraq into America’s blind spot. The blindness became policy. Even as ISIS was capturing entire cities, Obama clung to the narrative that the local franchises were Jayvee teams and that the entire War on Terror could be wrapped up by withdrawing from Afghanistan.
The administration’s insistence that the Iraq War couldn’t exist made it inevitable that it would. Each denial was read by ISIS, its supporters and opponents as proof that Obama was afraid of to fight it.
Televised genocide and mass rape forced Obama back into Iraq, but with the same lack of commitment. Just as before his final withdrawal, his priority is not to win the war but to avoid the appearance of blame. Once again he is trying to fight a war without fighting it by doing as little as he can get away with.
Obama does not fear an ISIS victory. He fears Bush’s Iraq War becoming his Iraq War. He worries about having his soft power foreign policy mired in the mud of Iraq. He is afraid of losing his Nobel Prize in Baghdad.
He ignored ISIS for as long as possible. Even now he does not envision defeating it, only “degrading” it until he can go back to safely ignoring it again. The rise of ISIS has not changed his Iraq policy. It is still the same disastrous and irresponsible policy that led to the rise of the world’s first Al Qaeda nation.
The plan is to reboot New Dawn, wait a while and then forget about Iraq all over again. But ISIS isn’t making it easy.
The roots of ISIS lie in the unwillingness of many Democrats to confront what Al Qaeda actually was and their expediency in seizing on its attacks in Iraq for political gain. Obama and his party have reaped the political benefits of Al Qaeda terror only to discover that the terror won’t go away just because Bush did.
Obama may refuse to call the war by its name, but the Iraq War has not ended and it’s his war now.
Exiled Fatah Terrorist Amna Muna on PA TV: We Will Continue Until Our Entire Land is Liberated
May 26, 2015Exiled Fatah Terrorist Amna Muna on PA TV: We Will Continue Until Our Entire Land is Liberated, MEMRI TV via You Tube, May 26, 2015
(The Palestinian Authority is Israel’s “partner for peace” and its titular leader, Abbas, can be an angel of peace according to the Pope. Some angel; some peace.– DM)
In a May 15 interview on the official Palestinian Authority TV channel, Amna Muna, a Palestinian terrorist who was freed in the Shalit prisoner swap and exiled to Turkey, said: “Nothing will break our resolve – not imprisonment, not exile, and not martyrdom… We shall continue on our path until our entire land is liberated.” Muna, who was speaking to PA TV over the Internet, was imprisoned for her involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenager Ofir Rahum in 2001.
Op-Ed: Every Day is “Opposite Day” with President Barack Obama
May 26, 2015Op-Ed: Every Day is “Opposite Day” with President Barack Obama, Israel National News, Mark Langfan, May 26, 2015
In sum, either Obama is, at best, a Middle-east policy ignoramus or, at worst, an Iranian stooge. If Obama rolled dice to make his Middle-East decisions, he’d have a better average than his current total Middle-East failure on every issue. So, chances are he is not intending his Middle-East policies to bring peace, but instead planning them to bring war and sow the violence, death and destruction that they have predictably brought.
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Obama has done exactly the opposite of what should be done in the Middle East for his entire term. Israel had better ignore his advice.
Following Obama’s speeches is like watchingSesame Street’s “Opposite Day”, the Sesame Street episode where everything is “opposite.” ‘Up’ is ‘down,’ ‘left’ is ‘right,’ and so on and so forth. It’s like Berra saying “It’s deja vu all over again.”
With Obama, for the past seven years, every day is “Opposite Day.” Everything he says sounds upside-down and backwards, and is proven, in the short-term, to be just that. Instead of being chastened by reality, Obama blithely still talks-the-talk like he’s reading off the Holy Grail.
Take Obama’s latest upside-down and backwards ‘Opposite-Day’ statement: “I continue to believe a two-state solution is absolutely vital for not only peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but for the long-term security of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state.” Given Obama’s 0%batting average on Middle-East strategy, it safe to conclude that keeping the “West Bank” is vital for Israel’s security.
For starters, what Middle East policy has Obama gotten right in the last seven years? Obama’s total retreat from Iraq that empowered Iranian-puppet al Maliki to castrate the Western Iraqi Sunnis that mutated into ISIS? Obama’s bombing of Qaddafi, and setting North Africa into a ball of flames? Obama’s toppling of Mubarak and coronation of the Muslim Brotherhood Sunni Islamic State of Egypt? Obama’s green-lighting Iran to set Shiite Arab against Sunni Arab as he anoints Iran as a nuclear-threshold state, and gives $50 billion to further fund its Islamic “resistance” revolution? Obama’s total protection of the genocidal Assad as he gasses Sunni Muslims to death?
Obama has made the wrong policy decision on every Middle Eastern issue, yet still speaks as if he’s the Middle-east guru.
The truth is Israel’s retention of the “West Bank” is vital not only for the peace and security of Israel, but also, most importantly, for the moderate Arabs who bathe in the warmth of Israel’s security envelope. If Israel left the “West Bank”, forget about the resulting Hamastan that once concerned us, because the result would be an ISIStan. Hamas will soon start asking Israel for protection from ISIS as that organization is beginning to attack it in Gaza. And after Assad falls, and the Sunnis start really paying Hezbollah back for its genocide against the Syrian Sunnis, the Shiites of South Lebanon will have only one protector: Israel.
Was Israel’s retreat from Gaza good for Egypt? No, it created a cancer that sent its Iranian-funded Islamic-bedlam to the Sinai, and then to Egypt-proper. Israel’s “peace-process” regarding Gaza has enabled Hamas to turn the Palestinians of Gaza into cannon-fodder for the world press, and the World Court. With Gaza’s failed-test-case, Obama’s claim that Israel repeat the same withdrawal from Judea and Samaria almost seems to present evidence of a malevolent intent to eradicate peace and security for Israel, and the moderate Arabs who are now protected by Israel.
And let us not forget Jordan. Wouldn’t Jordan “love” an ISIStan state to its west? The analogy is simple, a Hamastan Gaza is to Egypt what an ISIStan “West Bank” would be to Jordan—a formula for Jordan’s total disintegration. As it is, Jordan’s King Abdullah is facing ISIS to the north and to the south. Jordan can be easily overrun, it hardly needs additional pressure along its western border, now protected by Israel.
In sum, either Obama is, at best, a Middle-east policy ignoramus or, at worst, an Iranian stooge. If Obama rolled dice to make his Middle-East decisions, he’d have a better average than his current total Middle-East failure on every issue. So, chances are he is not intending his Middle-East policies to bring peace, but instead planning them to bring war and sow the violence, death and destruction that they have predictably brought.
If Obama says “up,” think “down;” and if he advises retreat from Judea and Samaria, Israel had better stay exactly where it is.
Muslim world reacts to Obama’s latest speech
May 26, 2015Muslim world reacts to Obama’s latest speech – IPhoneConservative, MEMRI TV via IPhoneConservative via You Tube, May 20, 2015
(Another update: Now the video is up at Front Page Magazine, with a caveat about Poe’s law.
Poe’s law is an internet adage which states that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, parodies of extremism are indistinguishable from sincere expressions of extremism.[1][2] Poe’s Law implies that parody will often be mistaken for sincere belief, and sincere beliefs for parody.[3]
– DM)
(UPDATE, May 27th: the subtitles were edited by IPhoneConservative. In a comment beneath the video, posted on May 26th, it was stated:
I must admit I find it fascinating that so many people commenting here are voicing their outrage at my editing of the subtitles in this clip from MEMRI. For those that don’t know who they are………..they are an invaluable site that documents and translates much of what goes on in Middle East media. This clip was from their site. Every day they post videos with leading Islamic figures and personalities making hideous statements about Jews and Christians. About killing gays and beating women. I wonder how many of those outraged by my use of the clip in this way are equally outraged by the real sentiments expressed on these program’s? Not enough I would guess.
– DM)
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(Offensive? Yes. Well worth watching? Yes.– DM)
Ash Carter: Iraqis Need to Be The Ones Fighting Islamic State But Don’t Have The Will to Do So
May 24, 2015(We can give them equipment and training. But how can we give them time — and training requires time as well as motivation on the part of the trainees — when the Islamic State gives them neither? — DM)
Why Obama has come to regret underestimating the Islamic State
May 24, 2015Why Obama has come to regret underestimating the Islamic State, The Telegraph, Richard Spencer, May 23, 2015
Displaced Sunni people, who fled the violence in the city of Ramadi, arrive at the outskirts of Baghdad Photo: STRINGER/IRAQ
Its strategy is essentially Maoist – the comparison has not been enough made, but now that Isil has declared itself an agent of Cultural Revolution, with its destruction of history, perhaps it will be more. Like Mao’s revolutionaries, it conquers the countryside before storming the towns.
Even now, the fact that much of its territory is rural or even desert is seen as a weakness. But it is beginning to “pick off” major towns and cities with impunity. In fact, where society is fractured, like Syria and Iraq, the “sea of revolution” panics the citizenry, making it feel “surrounded” by unseen and incomprehensible agents of doom.
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Have any words come back to haunt President Obama so much as his description of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant last team as a “JV” – junior varsity – team of terrorists?
This wasn’t al-Qaeda in its 9/11 pomp, he said; just because a university second team wore Manchester United jerseys didn’t make them David Beckham.
How times change. As of this weekend, the JV team is doing a lot better than Manchester United. With its capture of Palmyra, it controls half of Syria.
Its defeat in Kobane – a town of which few non-Kurds had heard – was cheered by the world; its victory in Ramadi last Sunday gives it control of virtually all of Iraq’s largest province, one which reaches to the edge of Baghdad.
Calling itself a state, one analyst wrote, no longer looks like an exaggeration.
Senior US officials seem to agree. “Isil as an organization is better in every respect than its predecessor of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. It’s better manned, it’s better resourced, they have better fighters, they’re more experienced,” one said at a briefing to explain the loss of Ramadi. “We’ve never seen something like this.”
How did Isil manage to inflict such a humiliation on the world’s most powerful country? As with many great shock-and-awe military advances over the years, it is easier to explain in hindsight than it apparently was to prevent.
Ever since Isil emerged in its current form in 2013, military and and political analysts have been saying that its success is due to its grasp of both tactics and strategy.
Its strategy is essentially Maoist – the comparison has not been enough made, but now that Isil has declared itself an agent of Cultural Revolution, with its destruction of history, perhaps it will be more. Like Mao’s revolutionaries, it conquers the countryside before storming the towns.
Even now, the fact that much of its territory is rural or even desert is seen as a weakness. But it is beginning to “pick off” major towns and cities with impunity. In fact, where society is fractured, like Syria and Iraq, the “sea of revolution” panics the citizenry, making it feel “surrounded” by unseen and incomprehensible agents of doom.
Like Mao, Isil uses propaganda – its famed dominance of social media – to terrorise its targets mentally. Senior Iraqi policemen have recounted being sent images via their mobile phones of their decapitated fellow officers. This has a chastening effect on the fight-or-flight reflex.
It then uses actual terror to further instil chaos. Isil’s main targets have been ground down by years of car bombs and “random” attacks. It seems extraordinary, but one of the reasons given by Mosul residents for preferring Isil rule is that there are no longer so many terrorist attacks: not surprising, since the “terrorists” are in control.
Only once your enemy is weak, divided, and demoralised, do you strike.
You then do so with an awesome show of force – one which can mislead as to the actual numbers involved.
The final assault on central Ramadi, which had been fought over for almost 18 months, began with an estimated 30 car bombs. Ten were said to be individually of an equivalent size to the 1995 Oklahoma bombing, which killed 168 people.
There is nothing new in saying that both Syrian and Iraqi governments have contributed greatly to the rise of Isil by failing to offer the Sunni populations of their countries a reason to support them.
Some say that focusing on the failings and injustices of these regimes ignores the fact that militant Islamism, like Maoism, is a superficially attractive, even romantic idea to many, whether oppressed or not, and that its notions must be fought and defeated intellectually and emotionally.
That is true. But relying on Islamic extremism to burn itself out, or for its followers to be eventually persuaded of the errors of their ways, is no answer. Like financial markets, the world can stay irrational for longer than the rest of us can stay politically and militarily solvent.
Rather, the West and those it supports have to show they can exert force against force, and then create a better world, one which all Iraqis and Syrians, especially Sunnis, are prepared to fight for.
In March, an uneasy coalition of Shia militias, Iraqi soldiers, and US jets took back the town of Tikrit from Isil. It remains a wasteland, whose inhabitants have yet to return, ruled over by gunmen rather than by the rule of law.
That is not an attractive symbol, for Iraqi Sunnis, of what victory against Isil looks like. If the war against Isil is to be won, the first step is to make clear to Iraqis and Syrians alike what victory looks like, and why it will be better for them.
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