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Our enemies are on the ballot today as well and remember, they have a vote.

November 4, 2014

Our enemies are on the ballot today as well and remember, they have a vote. LTC Allen B. West (U.S. Army, ret.), November 4, 2014

(Not even the force of Obama’s character, honed during his time as a community organizer, is degrading or destroying the Islamic State. Is he is the one for whom IS had been waiting?– DM)

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[T[his is what happens when you have a cast of amateurs masquerading as national security experts or advisors — such as Susan Rice, Dan Pfeiffer or Ben Rhoades. This is what happens when you have a truly inept Secretary of Defense in Chuck Hagel, and a lack of trust and belief in the combined experience of the senior U.S. military generals. And all comes back to the desk of Valerie Jarrett.

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Today is the critical 2014 midterm Election Day and I won’t beleaguer you with many posts today, but here’s something about which we need be aware.

As President Obama touted, his policies are on the ballot today – but I haven’t heard any candidates or incumbents discussing his foreign policies at length.

Obama’s solution to the ISIS crisis was to arm the Free Syrian Army — we have written often about how that is a flawed strategy. As former Commandant of the Marine Corps General James T. Conway stated, it didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding — and it only took three months, from August 8th, for that prediction to come to fruition.

As reported by the UK Guardian, “The U.S. plan to rally proxy ground forces to complement its air strikes against ISIS militants in Syria is in tatters after jihadis ousted Washington’s main ally from its stronghold in the north over the weekend. The attack on the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) by the al-Qaida-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra came after weeks of clashes between the two groups around the city of Idlib, which has remained one of the last bastions of regime control in northern Syria throughout the civil war. Militants overran the command center of the SRF’s leader, Jamal Maarouf, in Deir Sonbol in a humiliating rout that came as U.S. and Arab air forces continued to attack ISIS in the Kurdish town of Kobani, 300 miles east, in an effort to prevent the town from falling.”

This represents the utter failure of strategy based on rhetoric, rather than the implementation of a sound strategy. Barack Hussein Obama truly believed that talk is the best means to evade a crisis — not realizing that the enemy has a vote.

We have never launched a full-scale air campaign against ISIS aimed to degrade and destroy the Islamic terrorist enemy. We continue to witness ISIS operating on multiple fronts conducting offensive operations — something we discussed here – and their main effort versus supporting efforts.

The Guardian says, “the defeat of Maarouf is a serious blow to the U.S. strategy of building a proxy coalition against Isis. It comes amid a groundswell of anger at the U.S. strikes across the opposition-held north, which have done nothing to slow the intensity of attacks from Bashar al-Assad’s air force, especially in Aleppo. “We thought the Americans were going to help us,” said an SRF spokesman. “But not only have they abandoned us, they have been helping the tyrant Bashar instead. We will move past this betrayal and get back to Jebel al-Zawiya [the group’s heartland], but it is going to take some time.”

So much for that faux alliance and promise from Obama.

According to the Guardian, “a survivor from one of the Syrian bombed refugee camps, Haithem Ahmed, who fled with his family to Turkey, said the Syrian regime had been emboldened by the U.S. attacks on a common enemy and was acting with increasing impunity. “It is obvious that the U.S. is supporting Assad,” he said. “Don’t bother trying to argue with me or anyone else about it. They are aiding the war against us. Their leaders are weak and they are liars.”

In addition, we failed to realize that the forces of Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS have bonded in an alliance — something we also reported on here. The al-Nusra front, which was supposed to be fighting against the Assad regime, decided to turn against the Free Syria Army forces, the SRF, to take away any ground options of Obama.

So Obama’s intent of outsourcing to the FSA is truly a non-viable option – as a matter of fact, it’s the option that has been degraded and destroyed. Obama’s decision not to attack ISIS but rather just support the free Syrian elements to defend their territories has been a disaster.

Confusion abounds in the Obama administration, as the Guardian reports “the U.S. defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, is reported to have warned national security adviser Susan Rice of a blowback among opposition communities in northern Syria because U.S. strategy against Assad has not been clearly defined.”

Ladies and gents, this is what happens when you have a cast of amateurs masquerading as national security experts or advisors — such as Susan Rice, Dan Pfeiffer or Ben Rhoades. This is what happens when you have a truly inept Secretary of Defense in Chuck Hagel, and a lack of trust and belief in the combined experience of the senior U.S. military generals. And all comes back to the desk of Valerie Jarrett.

But if the events in Syria are disturbing, “In Iraq, Isis has reportedly killed over 230 members of a tribe in western Anbar province in the last ten days, including dozens of women and children. The killings were some of the worst bloodshed in the country since the militants swept through northern Iraq in June.”

In this midterm election we need to realize we have no national security strategy whatsoever — not in the Middle East, not towards Iran, not towards Russia, and certainly not towards China. ISIS and Islamo-fascists are just handing the Obama administration its collective arse and embarrassing it at every turn.

The sad result is that more men, women and children are being slaughtered and sold off into slavery — yes, in the 21st century. Perhaps someone out in Colorado could tell Senator Mark Udall there’s a real “War on Women” going on — not that made up political stuff. But hopefully after tonight, it will be a moot point as far as he’s concerned.

There is much at stake in the Middle East and a lack of a determined strategic vision and resolute commitment is evident to both “allies” and foes. ISIS and the Islamists have a vision, a strategy, and developing alliances and growing recruiting numbers. This is a war of ideologies, but we have a president who refuses to acknowledge that premise — perhaps because he supports the Islamist ideology.

The Guardian says, “Kobani has become a defining struggle between ISIS and the U.S., as much as it is between the jihadis and the Kurds who, with U.S. help, beat back an advance on Irbil in August. If ISIS was able to take Kobani it could boast a significant victory. A victory over the secular Kurds would help advance its hardline interpretation of Islam, which has seen it rule areas it controls along strict medieval precepts that are rooted in an uncompromising understanding of Islamic teachings.”

The ideology must be defeated foremost. The enemy must then be destroyed in detail. The failed policy of doing neither is on the ballot today.

It is a time for choosing.

Categories: Air strikes, Allen West, Ideology, International Community, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Islamism, Kerry, Middle East, Obama, Syria
Tags: Allen West, Allies, Chuck Hagel, Free Syrian Army, Iraq, Islamic State, Middle East, Syria

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Who is the Real Chickenshit?

November 4, 2014

Who is the Real Chickenshit? Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, November 4, 2014

(Are attempts to spawn a new Islamic Caliphate more grounded in fantasy than Obama-Kerry perceptions of the Islamic State, grounded in their ill-formed perceptions of fact and ideology? Or less? — DM)

Judging by their actions, most Arab leaders do not want to create yet another terrorist Islamist state, dedicated to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and to toppling their regimes. We do want a Palestinian state, but please, only one that will provide responsible governance.

According to the “Arab street,” it is the Americans and Europeans who are cowards, afraid to take significant steps against Iran, and terrified of the Islamic ghettoes in their cities, which have been exporting terrorists to fight for the Islamic State, and providing housing to the seasoned fighters who return.

To Arabs, the ultimate irony is that America is paying Qatar to have its airbase there, while Qatar is paying terrorists to kill Americans.

When John Kerry claimed it was the unresolved Palestinian issue that caused a ripple effect that crated ISIS, he simply inspired the Palestinians to use Al-Aqsa mosque as a religious trigger for future bloodshed.

There is a civil war currently under way between radical Islam — motivated by imperialist fantasies of restoring the Islamic Caliphate — and the more moderate secular Muslim regimes that are seeking the path to modernization and progress.

At the same time, Sunni Islam is in the midst of an increasingly violent crisis in its dealings with Shi’ite Iran, which looks as if it is about to be granted nuclear weapons capability, and which for decades quietly has been eyeing neighboring Arab oil fields.

Into the middle of this explosive disarray, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his supporters have thrown the accusation that it was actually Israel’s so-called refusal to reach a peace agreement that was responsible for the ripple effect that led to the creation of ISIS. This incorrect diagnosis of the situation merely postpones the West’s efforts to find a real, workable solution for the Palestinian issue.

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Does Kerry really blame Israel for ISIS? Above, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Israel, on July 23, 2014. (Image source: U.S. State Department)

It is easy for the leaders of the Arab world to latch onto Kerry’s accusation and use it justify their weakness and unwillingness to enter into a direct battle against terrorism; to let America do the dirty work, and conveniently to relieve the Arab world of having to recognize Israel and establish a Palestinian state.

They would also be able to avoid dealing with Israel’s demand for the Palestinian territories to be disarmed and the Palestinians’ demands for concessions from Israel.

Judging by their actions, most Arab leaders have no desire to see the Palestinian issue resolved. They seem to prefer preserving the status quo. They blame Israel for refusing to make concessions to the Palestinians and hope that this refusal will weaken Israel, even though Israel is their strategic defense against Iran.

Most Arab leaders do not want to create what is bound soon to become yet another terrorist Islamist state, dedicated to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and to toppling their regimes. The Arab leaders already have to contend with ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the Al-Nusra Front in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, which are enough for them, to say nothing of Africa from Nigeria to Somalia and everything in between.

But if Israel can be blamed for another of world’s ills, with Kerry’s blessing, why waste the opportunity?

When Jordan’s King Abdullah called the current Islamic civil war a cry of distress, he was not speaking randomly. There is a genuine problem.

No examples are better than Turkey, Qatar and Iran. Turkey, led by its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hosts Hamas’s overseas command center; is supported by Qatar and would apparently like to take control of more Sunni territory by subverting the Sunni Arab monarchies. Such a move would enable Erdogan to realize his outspoken dream of recreating an Ottoman Empire and Caliphate.

Turkey and Qatar, its partner in plotting the return of the Caliphate, have left their fingerprints on most of the terrorist attacks and catastrophes currently visited upon the Middle East, especially in the fields of subversion, incitement to terrorism, and the arming and training of terrorists.

The Middle Eastern Sunni Islamist terrorist organizations, meanwhile, are being incited and indoctrinated by Al-Jazeera TV, a Muslim Brotherhood megaphone that belongs to Qatar’s ruling al-Thani family. It was Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel that created the “Arab Spring” by taking the story of a fruit-seller who merely wanted a permit, and whipping it up, non-stop, until it grew into a revolution that brought down Tunisia’s government.

The Middle East’s terrorist gangs are now armed and trained with funding from Qatar. Recently, in yet another savored irony, Turkey agreed to help train Syrian rebels and allow the U.S. to use its military bases — but for Turkey, the plan is probably to bring down Syria’s non-Sunni President, Bashar Al-Assad, and not, as the U.S. might imagine, to bring down ISIS.

In the past, Persian Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia joined in training Islamic terrorist cadres, but currently, as the Arab proverb goes, “The magic spell boomeranged,” and Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have to defend themselves from the very groups they helped create.

Terrorist organizations are now generously funded by Qatar and NATO-member Turkey, which inspire them to attack the regimes of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan, and various regimes in the Persian Gulf and Africa. Of course, they are all also inspired to attack Israel, as Hamas has done.

Turkey and Qatar are also exploiting the naiveté of the Western world, encouraging ISIS operatives to make preparations to attack Europe and the United States. Preachers of “political Islam” incite susceptible Islamic youths in the West and prepare them for a terrorist campaign. They use the West’s political correctness, free speech and support for “pluralism,” all the while insisting they are not preaching terrorism.

Turkey and Qatar, along with Iran — which does its utmost to export the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution throughout both North and South America, as well as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen — are aided by a mechanism known as the da’wah, or “outreach,” Da’wah, technically the preaching of Islam, is used by political Islam for indoctrinating, enlisting and handling Islamist terrorists worldwide. Perfected for terrorist purposes by the Muslim Brotherhood, its mouthpiece is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who, like Hamas’s leader, Khaled Mashaal, is based in Qatar.

While Iran’s rivals, the Sunni states, conduct their civil wars, Iran only becomes stronger. Not only is it turning itself into a nuclear power, it is also strengthening all its outposts in the Middle East and around the world. It supports the Shi’ite regime in Iraq against ISIS; it arms and funds the Houthis in Yemen and the Hezbollah in Lebanon; and it supports the Syrian Alawite regime against its Sunni opponents.

When it comes to terrorism, Iran does not draw partisan lines. It also supports the Sunni groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which seek to destroy Israel and attack the Egyptians in the Sinai Peninsula.

In response to the colossal threat of radical Islam, the whimpering voice of the West can barely be heard. The U.S. administration targeted Israel for condemnation. A “senior official,” most likely the current White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, called Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit,” for being afraid to make peace with the Palestinians.

According to the “Arab street,” including the Palestinian street, it is the Americans and Europeans who are cowards, afraid to take significant steps against Iran, and terrified of the Islamic ghettoes in their cities, which have been exporting terrorists to fight for the Islamic State, and providing housing to the seasoned fighters who return.

The Sunni states under Shi’ite threat cannot even reach an agreement among themselves about what is to be done; and the Palestinians, in their folly, have chosen the worst possible moment to ignite violence in Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa mosque. The Palestinians seem not to understand that the Arab regimes that might support them are currently busy fighting for their own survival, and have no desire to fall prey to Palestinian provocations about what they realize all too well are fictional threats to Jerusalem.

Given the current situation, Turkey’s regional political actions are dangerous, underhanded and hypocritical. To achieve their ends, Turkey’s leaders seem to have no qualms about sacrificing their minorities, such as Christians and the Kurds (most of whom are Sunni). Turkey’s leaders were the first to cry “humanitarian crisis” when Israel imposed a closure on the Gaza Strip to prevent Iran from sending Hamas arms. Turkey sent the Mavi Marmara flotilla to protect the Gazans, who were never in any danger in the first place. Turkey’s leaders then weakened Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who, at least at that time, showed himself willing to reach a peace agreement with the Israelis. But when Syria’s Kurds are being killed in Kobani on a daily basis, the Turks are silent, perhaps secretly comfortable seeing a group that wants a state of its own apart from Turkey, being attacked.

Thus, when John Kerry claimed that it was the unresolved Palestinian issue that caused a ripple effect that created ISIS, he simply inspired the Palestinians to use Al-Aqsa mosque as a religious trigger for future bloodshed. The idea is not new; it was used in 1929 by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and led to anti-Jewish riots and the massacre of the Jews in Hebron. It was used again by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in 2000, to incite the Palestinians to the second intifada, which killed untold numbers of Jews and Arabs. Today, Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’s Khaled Mashaal are doing the same thing to incite a jihad that this time will truly be religious and not based on real estate.

The more Kerry accuses Israel of having had a hand in creating ISIS, the more the Palestinians will use Al-Aqsa mosque to stir the fire burning under the bubbling cauldron of the Middle East.

The Palestinians’ religious incitement campaign is currently being waged primarily by Mahmoud Abbas, the man who stood in front of the UN and accused Israel of fomenting a religious war. This is the same Mahmoud Abbas who calls on Palestinians to use every means available to fight Israel, while at the same time denying that he is doing so.

Meanwhile, Qatar lurks in the background, instructing Al-Jazeera TV to incite the Palestinians against Israel, Egypt and Jordan, and encouraging terrorist attacks that lead only to justified Israeli reprisals.

Qatar’s royal family hides behind the security of having a major U.S. airbase on its soil, while supporting Hamas, the Islamic Movement in Israel and the terrorist organizations in the Sinai Peninsula. To Arabs, the ultimate irony is that Americans are paying Qatar to have an airbase there, while Qatar is paying terrorists to kill Americans.

Qatar also still finds time nonsensically to accuse the wakf in Jordan, responsible for Al-Aqsa mosque, of collaborating with Israel to eradicate all signs of Muslim presence on the Temple Mount. Qatar’s only plan with that at the moment, however, is to cause riots in Jordan to oust Jordan’s king.

Inspired by Western accusations against Israel and the West’s enthusiastic recognition of a Palestinian state — without requiring the direct negotiations with Israel, as obligated by international treaties — the Palestinian leadership has become more radicalized.

Mahmoud Abbas has gone so far as to abandon his pretense of moderation: if the Israelis can be accused of creating the ISIS with no mention made of the culpability of Hamas, whose ideology is the same as ISIS’s, Mahmoud Abbas has been freed of any commitment to peace and can actively pursue the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state.

In addition, witnessing Russia’s abrogation of its 1994 Budapest Memorandum with the Ukraine, with virtually no adverse consequences, must have seemed a precedent too tempting to ignore. Thus, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas do truly speak with one voice, but it is the voice of Hamas.

Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas’s political bureau, called on all the Palestinians to take up arms to defend Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The mosque, he said, justifies jihad and the sacrificing of shaheeds [martyrs] to liberate it, and, as in the Hamas charter, that “resistance” is the only solution for the problems of the Palestinian people.

Mashaal was echoed by Mahmoud Abbas at the 14th Fatah conference. Abbas said that under no condition were Jews to be allowed into Al-Aqsa mosque or the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, because any Jewish presence would defile them. On whose authority did he take possession of the Christian holy sites? A short time earlier, Abbas had even claimed that he had no intention of inciting a third intifada against Israel.

Somehow, John Kerry has managed to link to Israel the Shi’ite-Sunni civil wars, radical Islam’s Muslim Brotherhood-inspired global plot and the creation of ISIS. Then he linked the failure of the Palestinian issue to have been resolved to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The unpopular and inconvenient truth is: if there is to be peace, Hamas has to be disarmed, the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip have to be demilitarized, Mahmoud Abbas has to recognize the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jews, and Netanyahu has to recognize the Palestinians state. Israel will then compensate the Palestinians with land in return for the land on which the three large blocks of settlements stand, as has already been agreed.

It is not Israel but the Palestinians who are trying to avoid negotiating a final agreement. They see themselves, with the backing of the UN and Secretary Kerry — and in a final breakdown of any trust in future international agreements — as able to achieve their desired result without having to make any concessions.

People who repeat infamies, as Kerry has done, not only encourage radicalism, they are just delaying the establishment of a Palestinian state. We do want a Palestinian state, but please only one that will provide responsible governance.

Categories: Antisemitism, Egypt, Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Iranian nukes, Iraq, Islam, Islamic State, Israel, Jerusalem, juden ist verboten, Kerry, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, Qatar, Syria, Turkey, Two state solution
Tags: Egypt, Iran, Iranian nukes, Islamic caliphate, Islamic State, Israel, Qatar, Settlements, Turkey

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Military Upset with White House ‘Micromanagement’ of ISIS War

October 31, 2014

Military Upset with White House ‘Micromanagement’ of ISIS War, Daily Beast, Josh Rogin, Eli Lake, October 31, 2014

(The impatient (non-Islamic) Islamic State seems unwilling to play “dither along with us” with the Obama Administration while awaiting news that the You Tube video which caused the entire mess has been taken down and its creator suitably punished. Please see also U.S. strategy against Islamic State hits major hurdles. — DM)

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[M]ilitary officers and civilian Pentagon leaders tell The Daily Beast, is the ISIS war’s decision-making process, run by National Security Advisor Susan Rice. It’s been manic and obsessed with the tiniest of details. Officials talk of sudden and frequent meetings of the National Security Council and the so-called “Principals Committee” of top defense, intelligence, and foreign policy officials (an NSC and three PCs in one week this month); a barrage of questions from the NSC to the agencies that create mountains of paperwork for overworked staffers; and NSC insistence on deciding minor issues even at the operational level.

“We are getting a lot of micromanagement from the White House. Basic decisions that should take hours are taking days sometimes,” one senior defense official told The Daily Beast.

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The Pentagon brass placed in charge of implementing Obama’s war against ISIS are getting fed up with the short leash the White House put them on.

Top military leaders in the Pentagon and in the field are growing increasingly frustrated by the tight constraints the White House has placed on the plans to fight ISIS and train a new Syrian rebel army.

As the American-led battle against ISIS stretches into its fourth month, the generals and Pentagon officials leading the air campaign and preparing to train Syrian rebels are working under strict White House orders to keep the war contained within policy limits. The National Security Council has given precise instructions on which rebels can be engaged, who can be trained, and what exactly those fighters will do when they return to Syria. Most of the rebels to be trained by the U.S. will never be sent to fight against ISIS.

Making matters worse, military officers and civilian Pentagon leaders tell The Daily Beast, is the ISIS war’s decision-making process, run by National Security Advisor Susan Rice. It’s been manic and obsessed with the tiniest of details. Officials talk of sudden and frequent meetings of the National Security Council and the so-called “Principals Committee” of top defense, intelligence, and foreign policy officials (an NSC and three PCs in one week this month); a barrage of questions from the NSC to the agencies that create mountains of paperwork for overworked staffers; and NSC insistence on deciding minor issues even at the operational level.

“We are getting a lot of micromanagement from the White House. Basic decisions that should take hours are taking days sometimes,” one senior defense official told The Daily Beast.

Other gripes among the top Pentagon and military brass are about the White House’s decision not to work with what’s left of the existing Syrian moderate opposition on the ground, which prevents intelligence sharing on fighting ISIS and prevents the military from using trained fighters to build the new rebel army that the President has said is needed to push Assad into a political negotiation to end the conflict.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel himself is among the critics of Obama’s strategy in Syria. Hagel wrote a memo last week to National Security Advisor Susan Rice warning that Obama’s Syria strategy was unclear about U.S. intentions with respect to Syrian President Bashar al Assad, undermining the plan.

Hagel stood by the memo Thursday. “We owe the president and we owe the National Security Council our best thinking on this. And it has to be honest and it has to be direct,” he told reporters.

But the top uniformed military leaders in charge of the operation are also struggling to work around the White House policy constraints and micromanagement, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of CENTCOM, and Gen. Michael Nagata, the SOCOM lead official in charge of the Syrian train and equip program, according to multiple officials and persons briefed by those generals.

Nagata has been tasked to build a new rebel army from scratch but is not permitted to work with existing brigades, meaning he must find and vet new soldiers, mostly sourcing from Syrian refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. What’s more, the size of the program will produce only 5,000 fighters a year after the training begin, most of whom who will serve as “local defense forces” and not actually go after ISIS, according to two officials briefed on the plan. Of those forces, 500 would be given additional training in “counterterrorism.” That’s a small attack force to face an ISIS military that is estimated to have tens of thousands of fighters.

Dempsey told reporters Thursday that the recruiting and vetting of soldiers for the new Syrian rebel army has not yet begun, although sites for the training camps have been chosen.

“At this point we still don’t know how long it’s going to take to send in the trained guys,” a senior Defense official said. “The situation is changing so much on the ground it’s hard to plan it out.”

Dempsey has twice made public statements that seemed to reveal his dissatisfaction with the White House policy. Last month, he said it would take 12,000 to 15,000 ground troops to effectively go after ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Earlier this month, he suggested that U.S. ground troops might be necessary to fight ISIS in the future, a comment he later walked back.

Many military officials, including at CENTCOM’s headquarters in Tampa and their air base in Qatar (where the ISIS air campaign is run) are barred from even communicating with Syrian opposition representatives unless those rebels are on a White House / State Department approved list. Many Syrian opposition leaders complain that Free Syrian Army brigades fighting ISIS now are offering help in making the ISIS strikes effective, but are getting no response from the administration.

The international coalition against ISIS, led on the U.S. side by retired Gen. John Allen and State Department official Brett McGurk, is working with Sunni tribes in Iraq to coordinate against ISIS. But they are not working with the corresponding tribes on the Syrian side of the mostly non-existent Iraq-Syria border. ISIS has slaughtered hundreds of these tribesmen in Eastern Syria who refused to yield to the group’s demands.

Meanwhile, the Free Syrian Army, largely written off by the White House, has been suffering heavy losses to ISIS as well as to the al-Qaeda affiliated al Nusrah Front, which has opened up a third fighting front against the FSA in cities like Idlib. FSA brigades that have been vetted by the U.S. government, including the Syrian Revolutionaries Front and Harakat Hazm, have seen their non-aggression pact with al Nusrah disappear.

“Al Qaeda has captured a number of villages from the FSA in Idlib and the fighting continues to be intense. The FSA needs urgent Coalition support in this fight because if Al Qaeda captures Jabal al-Zawiyeh in Idlib, extremists will be positioned to cut off a critical line of supply from the Turkish border,” said Oubai Shahbandar, advisor to the Syrian National Coalition. “So the question is: Will Coalition airstrikes help the FSA fight al Qaeda or will they allow Al Qaeda to overrun moderate forces?”

NSC Spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan declined to comment on the criticisms coming from the Pentagon and military about the White House’s approach to ISIS and training the Syrian rebels. But on Wednesday, Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken, who is rumored to be Obama’s choice to replace Bill Burns as Deputy Secretary of State, defended the White House strategy but said that FSA is just not a viable partner.

“For more than two years working with and supporting the moderate opposition, we’ve made some gains in making it more effective and trying to position it as a counterweight to Assad. Now we’re intensifying that support,” he said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The coalition can do real damage to ISIL through the air. But without forces on the ground to hold territory from which ISIL has been removed, we will not be able to shrink and eventually eliminate the safe haven.”

Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that there is no military solution to the Syria crisis and said the U.S. is reaching out to countries like Russian and Iran to seek a new political negotiation. Syrian National Coalition President Hadi al Bahra told The Daily Beast last month that there is no genuine interest in the West for a new political process, which he described as being “in a coma.”

“There have been so many things said on Syria that were not delivered, nobody thinks the President really wants to do anything on Syria. Even currently serving officials realize that you cannot bomb your way out of this and you need to have a plan for a political solution, but we don’t have it,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “There’s needs to be a fully thought out strategy with a political dimension that involves the opposition. If you don’t do that, you can’t solve this problem.”

Categories: Air strikes, Free Syrian Army, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Obama, Susan Rice, Syria
Tags: Iran, Iraq, Susan Rice, Syria, U.S. military

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U.S. strategy against Islamic State hits major hurdles

October 31, 2014

U.S. strategy against Islamic State hits major hurdles, LA Times, David S. Cloud, W.J. Hennigan, Raja Abdulrahim, October 30, 2014

(Happy Halloween from the Obama Administration. — DM)

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Syrian police and residents inspect the site of a car bombing in Homs on Oct. 29. The U.S. plan to raise a rebel army in Syria to fight Islamic State has run into steep political and military obstacles. (European Pressphoto Agency)

The Obama administration’s plan to raise a 15,000-strong rebel army in Syria has run into steep political and military obstacles, raising doubts about a key element of the White House strategy for defeating Islamic State militants in the midst of a civil war.

Pentagon concerns have grown so sharp that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel sent a two-page memo to the White House last week warning that the overall plan could collapse because U.S. intentions toward Syrian President Bashar Assad are unclear, according to a senior defense official who read the memo but was not authorized to speak publicly.

President Obama has called on Assad to step down, but he has not authorized using military force, including the proposed proxy army, to remove the Syrian leader.

At a news conference Thursday, Hagel declined to discuss his memo to national security advisor Susan Rice, but he acknowledged that Assad has inadvertently benefited from more than five weeks of U.S.-led airstrikes against the Islamic State, one of the most powerful antigovernment forces in Syria’s bitter conflict.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry sought to paper over the problem Thursday, telling a forum in Washington that the proposed proxy army “can have an impact on Assad’s decision-making so we can get back to a table where we could negotiate a political outcome, because we all know there is no military resolution of Syria.”

Rebel leaders in Syria say they would reject joining a U.S.-backed force that is not aimed at defeating Assad, their main enemy.

Senior U.S. military officers also privately warn that the so-called Syrian moderates that U.S. planners hope to recruit — opposition fighters without ties to the Islamic radicals — have been degraded by other factions and forces, including Assad’s army, during the war.

It will take years to train and field a new force capable of launching an offensive against the heavily armed and well-funded Islamic State fighters, who appear well-entrenched in northern Syria, the officers say.

“We’re not going to be able to build that kind of credible force in enough time to make a difference,” said a senior U.S. officer who is involved in military operations against the militants and who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “We’ve watched the moderate opposition dwindle and dwindle and now there’s very little left.”

The Pentagon plan calls for putting 5,000 rebel fighters into Syria in a year, and 15,000 over the next three years.

It is the least developed and most controversial part of the multi-pronged U.S. strategy, which also includes near-daily airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, deployment of U.S. military advisors and other support to assist Iraqi government and Kurdish forces, along with attempts to choke off the militants’ financing from oil sales and foreign donors.

When officers involved in high-level Pentagon deliberations in the summer raised concerns about building a rebel army from scratch, they were overruled by senior commanders, who warned that airstrikes alone would not defeat the militants, one of the officers said.

But Pentagon unease has intensified in recent weeks as Jordan and Turkey, two allies that the Obama administration is counting on to help train the proposed proxy force, made it clear that they are lukewarm to the plan, two U.S. officials said.

Washington and its allies are chiefly split over whether the proposed force should focus on reclaiming Syrian territory now held by the Islamic State militants, which is the U.S. priority, or should also battle troops loyal to Assad, the allies’ main concern.

Turkey said this month that it would train a portion of the Syrian force, joining Saudi Arabia in training on its territory. U.S. officials don’t expect to assemble the first group of “moderate” rebels, drawing them from inside Syria or from crowded refugee camps in nearby countries, until early next year at the earliest.

But Turkish officials have signaled that the rebels it trains would concentrate on battling Assad’s forces, not Islamic State, once they return to Syria.

Jordan has not joined the training effort, although it hosts a separate, smaller, CIA-run operation for Syrian insurgents.

U.S. officials say greater involvement by Turkey and Jordan would allow them to increase the number who can be trained, and provide easier conduits for support and resupply when they return to Syria.

The dispute reflects the complex calibrations now in play as the Islamic State militants shake long-established political and military fault lines in the Middle East.

Most dramatically, perhaps, U.S. forces are now in at least tacit alignment with traditional enemies such as Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant and political group, against a common threat.

Syrian rebel leaders and Arab allies complain that the U.S.-led airstrikes have helped Assad by weakening one of his most powerful foes and enabling his army to step up attacks on other rebel factions.

A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, an umbrella organization claiming to represent largely autonomous rebels in Syria, said fighters were incensed by the U.S. insistence on focusing entirely on Islamic State.

“They have forgotten that tens of thousands of civilians are suffering because of the regime,” said the spokesman, who did not want his name published because it could endanger his family. “Our main cause is the regime, and that will remain our main cause.”

A rebel commander, a defector from the Syrian army who also asked for anonymity, agreed. The U.S. plan “doesn’t work for us,” he said.

“They are concerned with ISIS … but we are concerned with the regime more than ISIS,” he said, using one of several acronyms for Islamic State.

U.S. Central Command, which is overseeing the effort to build a Syrian force, says questions about its direction will be resolved once the fledgling program is underway.

“We are early on in this and there’s much to be figured out,” said Maj. Curtis J. Kellogg, a spokesman for Central Command.

Frederic C. Hof, a former special advisor to President Obama for Syria, said the U.S. plan “is going to be a tough sell” in Syria.

“You can always get people by providing weapons, ammo and pay, but your appeal to a large number of Syrians will increase dramatically if it is a force whose goal is eventually to govern all of Syria,” not just beat one faction, he added.

The caution reflects, in part, a U.S. desire to reassure Iran, one of Assad’s closest backers, that it is not seeking to oust him by force. If the U.S. backtracked on that promise, Iran might step up military support for Assad.

Tehran also could respond by using local Shiite militias to attack U.S. personnel or facilities in Iraq. The Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq have coordinated their attacks on Islamic State with the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad.

“If we really focus on Assad, the Iranian piece of this coalition [against Islamic State] will fracture, and we will have Shia militants trying to target us,” said the senior U.S. military officer.

The U.S. experience with proxy military forces is laced with disappointment.

The Kennedy administration backed a failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in 1961 after training a counterrevolutionary brigade. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration bankrolled the Contras in Nicaragua, who were unsuccessful against the Sandinistas’ socialist revolution.

“We’ve helped arm insurgencies before,” Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst who now is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Nearly all of them have been complete failures or marginal to the final outcome. But there was one spectacular success.”

The CIA, working with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, covertly poured $4 billion into arming a rebel force in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, helping them drive out Soviet forces. Riedel, who wrote a book about the undertaking, said the CIA operation hastened the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

The Syrian rebel forces, with their fractured leadership and rival sponsors, bear similarities to the competing Afghan mujahedin factions during that war, Riedel said. If the U.S. can secure tight-knit partnerships with neighboring countries on training the rebels, it could also see success against Islamic State.

“There’s no reason we can’t do it again,” he said. “But it doesn’t happen overnight.”

Categories: Air strikes, Combat troops, Free Syrian Army, Generals, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Kerry, Obama, Syria
Tags: Bashar Assad, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Military, Obama Administration, Syria

Comments: 1 Comment

A virus worse than Ebola is spreading across the world

October 26, 2014

A virus worse than Ebola is spreading across the world, Dan Miller’s Blog, October 26, 2014

It’s called “insanity” and becomes more virulent and more contagious daily.

Lunatic assylum

Lunatic asylum

Here’s a definition of insanity:

Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns.

Although the definition references “abnormal mental or behavioral patterns” [emphasis added], the behaviors here involved have become increasingly “normal.” Multicultural linguistics are part, but only part, of the problem.

Insane responses to Iran nukes, terrorism support and human rights

As the P5+1 negotiations continue under Obama’s guidance, Iran appears increasingly likely to get or keep nukes. Iran knows Obama.

The Iranian president’s senior advisor has called President Barack Obama “the weakest of U.S. presidents” and described the U.S. leader’s tenure in office as “humiliating,” according to a translation of the highly candid comments provided to the Free Beacon. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

And with the deadline quickly approaching on talks between the U.S. and Iran over its contested nuclear program, Younesi’s denigrating views of Obama could be a sign that the regime in Tehran has no intent of conceding to America’s demands.

. . . .

“Americans witnessed their greatest defeats in Obama’s era: Terrorism expanded, [the] U.S. had huge defeats under Obama [and] that is why they want to compromise with Iran,” Younesi said.

. . . .

“We [the Islamic Republic] have to use this opportunity [of Democrats being in power in the U.S.], because if this opportunity is lost, in future we may not have such an opportunity again,” Younesi said. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

The criticism of Obama echoes comments made recently by other world leaders and even former members of the president’s own staff, such as Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Do enough of us, and of perhaps greater importance enough of our “leaders,” know Him as well as Iran does?

The P5+1 negotiations were a scam from the beginning and the scam continues, enhanced by perceived needs to work with the (Shiite) Islamic Republic of Iran to degrade the Sunni (but “non-Islamic”) Islamic State and otherwise to “degrade” terrorism.

The Iranian government is well known for its funding of terrorism. The U. S. Government has long been well aware of it.

The United States State Department describes Iran as an “active state sponsor of terrorism.”^[2]US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice elaborated stating, “Iran has been the country that has been in many ways a kind of central banker for terrorism in important regions like Lebanon through Hezbollah in the Middle East, in the Palestinian Territories, and we have deep concerns about what Iran is doing in the south of Iraq.”^[1]

So is the Obama Administration.

In July 2012, the United States State Department released a report on terrorism around the world in 2011. The report states that “Iran remained an active state sponsor of terrorism in 2011 and increased its terrorist-related activity” and that “Iran also continued to provide financial, material, and logistical support for terrorist and militant groups throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.” The report states that Iran has continued to provide “lethal support, including weapons, training, funding, and guidance, to Iraqi Shia militant groups targeting U.S. and Iraqi forces, as well as civilians,” despite pledging to support the stabilization of Iraq, and that the Qods Force provided training to the Taliban in Afghanistan on “small unit tactics, small arms, explosives, and indirect fire weapons, such as mortars, artillery, and rockets.” The report further states that Iran has provided weapons and training to the Assad regime in Syria which has launched a brutal crackdown on Syrian rebels, as well as providing weapons, training, and funding to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, among others, and has assisted in rearming Hizballah. [Emphasis added.]

Iran is also remarkable for its failure to provide even minimal human rights. For example, it has been reported that Iran executed more than four hundred people during the first half of 2014. That’s more than two per day.

Despite Iran’s state anti-Semitism, the recent arrest of U.S. journalists, and the continued oppression of women, the Obama administration has been attempting a rapprochement with the Iranian regime. Fending off Iran hawks in Congress and the D.C. punditocracy, the administration has argued for a policy of constructive engagement, pursuing diplomacy over military action to halt Iran’s nuclear program. The execution of two gay men, while it may not be surprising, certainly doesn’t make that “engagement” any easier.

Iran’s cooperation also is seen as essential to managing the chaos in Iraq and the Islamic State. With U.S. airstrikes against the Sunni militants, on-off (now definitely off) support of Iraq’s Shiite (ex-) Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the possible disintegration of Iraq, this cooperation—or at least not overt opposition—is surely of more strategic importance than the latest human rights abuse. [Emphasis added.]

The execution of Rayhaneh Jabbari is the most recent of such atrocities announced by Iran. Please see also Iran’s “Hanging Machine” to Execute Reyhaneh Jabbari and “Goodbye, Dear Mum”: Iran Executes Rayhaneh Jabbari — UPDATED.

Iran’s support for terrorism, abysmal violation of even the most basic human rights — and what these Iranian characteristics suggest that Iran is likely to do with its nukes — appear to be deemed of no importance by the P5+1 negotiators.

Domestic terrorism

Terrorism is often labeled “workplace violence,” a “traffic accident“ or just about anything but Islamic. This is from Jihad Watch:

A traffic incident in Jerusalem. Another traffic incident in Canada just a few days ago. Odd coincidence: both drivers were devout Muslims who killed Infidels “in the name of Allah” (as the Canadian bad driver put it). Meanwhile, also in Canada, a mentally ill man shoots up the Parliament building and murders a soldier. And in New York City, a man wielding a hatchet injures several police officers. Another odd coincidence: both the Canadian mentally ill man and the New York hatchet-wielder were also devout Muslims. The father of the former waged jihad in Libya, and the latter called for armed revolt in the U.S. But you must put all of these odd coincidences out of your mind right now. We know that none of this can have anything to do with Islam, and that greasy Islamophobes are the only ones who think otherwise.

“Memo from US Consulate refers to Jerusalem terror attack as ‘traffic incident,’” by Itamar Eichner, Ynet News, October 24, 2014 (thanks to Hamish):

Hours after a Palestinian terrorist drove his car into a crowd waiting at a light rail station in Jerusalem, the US consulate in the city issued a memo referring to the attack as a “traffic incident”.

A three-month-old baby was killed and seven other people were wounded when Abdel Rahman a-Shaludi drove his car across incoming traffic to strike the people waiting at the station. The baby girl, Chaya Zissel Braun, had American citizenship.

The memo was sent to employees of the American consulate, which is based in East Jerusalem. It asks staff to report “any emergency.”

AnneinPT (Israel) provides an actual Associated Press news headline about the “traffic accident.” “Israeli police shoot man in east Jerusalem.”

Here’s how the AP, consistently with its customary reporting on things Israeli, might treat Palestinian rockets thwarted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system: “Palestinian rockets damaged beyond repair by Israeli counter-measures.”

“Lone wolf” Islamic terrorists are exceedingly rare.

[N]umerous examples show that terrorist actors are almost always part of a network who were involved in recruiting and tasking terrorist activity. As Max Abrahms at Northeastern University has observed:

Since the advent of international terrorism in 1970, none of the 40 most lethal terrorist attacks has been committed by a person unaffiliated with some terrorist group, according to publicly available data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, which is funded by the Department of Homeland Security and stored at the University of Maryland. In fact, lone wolves have carried out just two of the 1,900 most deadly terrorist incidents over the last four decades.

So why “lone wolf”? Simply, it was a mechanism promulgated by the CVE [countering violent extremism] industry, with willing cooperation from law enforcement and intelligence officials, to exonerate themselves when a terrorist attack happened. At its core is terror agnosticism: “There is possibly no way to predict who will turn to terrorism, so therefore we can’t be held responsible when it happens. Oh, and give us more money so we can better improve how we won’t be able to predict terror attacks.” [Insert added.]

It’s Islamic terrorism all the way down:

Yet there has been great reluctance to associate terrorist attacks with the “religion of peace.” Here are examples of media and official reactions to the recent terrorist attacks in Canada: “CBC’s Derek Stoffel tweeted: ‘Amid the speculation in the #OttawaShooting in #Canada, it’s important to remember #ISIS hasn’t shown interest in attacks abroad.’” However,

Stoffel should have known that in late September, the Islamic State’s spokesman, Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani, urged Muslims to murder non-Muslims in the West. “Rely upon Allah,” he thundered, “and kill him in any manner or way however it may be. Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict.

“The hard-Left Vox reacted to the revelation that Zehaf-Bibeau was a Muslim by dismissing the fact as irrelevant.”

Not to be outdone in multicultural empathy,

In the wake of the shootings in Ottawa, the police chiefs of Toronto and Ottawa wrote to local Muslim leaders, assuring them of their good will and urging Muslims to contact them in case of a “backlash.” These politically correct cops appear to have learned their lesson well: after every jihad attack, Muslims are the victims, and need special reassurances.

Eventually, the Canadian terrorist attacks were labeled “terrorism.” Even the White House called them “despicable terrorist attacks,” without mentioning the words “Islam” or “Islamist.”

Finally, NY hatchet attack was terror according to police commissioner. But again, not Islamist terrorism.

Voting fraud

In 2008 we the people elected Obama as “our” President. We did it again in 2012. He was viewed by many as the one for whom they had been waiting.

He was seen as the “God of all things.”

Fortunately, some seem to be recovering from their dementia.

However, all too many are still infected with insanity and continue to be contagious. Here’s a video of James O’Keefe talking with college students about vote fraud:

Vote fraud is apparently good when done for a “good” purpose.

When Obama spoke about Democrats running for reelection appearing to desert but really supporting him, he said

“So this isn’t about my feelings being hurt. These are folks who are strong allies and supporters of me. And I tell them, I said, ‘You know what, you do what you need to win. I will be responsible for making sure that our voters turn out.'” [Emphasis added.]

He may not have intended to encourage voter fraud, but “you do what you need to win” may well have been taken seriously by Obamabots. It has, as a minimum, an unpleasant odor.

According to a Washington Post study, non-citizens could decide the vote in November 2014.

How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.

. . . .

We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted. [Emphasis added.]

According to Watchdog Org,

With early voting starting Thursday, North Carolina’s election board found 154 ineligible voters on its poll lists — and officials are examining thousands more questionable registrations.

The illegal immigrants landed on the state’s voter rolls, courtesy of the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The State Board of Elections said late Tuesday that more than 9,000 additional voters’ names are being checked for legal status. They do not expect to finish checking before early voting starts Thursday.

It’s necessary for Republicans to win outside the “margin of fraud,” and there have already been signs of voter fraud. In Arizona,

A Republican party official in the largest county in Arizona says surveillance tape shows a progressive Hispanic activist blatantly and openly engaging in vote fraud.

. . . .

Between 12:54 and 1:04, LaFaro said, he observed a man wearing a “Citizens for a Better Arizona” T-shirt loudly drop a box containing hundreds of early-voting ballots on a table.

Citizens for a Better Arizona is a progressive group.

The man then began “stuffing the ballot box,” LaFaro said. “I watched in amazement.”

In Chicago, Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan’s votes for Republican candidates, including for himself, were registered as having been cast for Democrats. He noticed the problem before pulling the ultimate lever and it was determined that the machine had been “improperly calibrated.” There is no indication in the linked article whether other machines were also “improperly calibrated” or whether any of them were examined to find out. Obviously, voters need to check for whom the machines say they have voted before pulling the lever. How many will bother to do so?

Since voter fraud may be insufficient, President Obama has diligently prevented voters from understanding what He intends to do about immigration soon after the election. Jonathan Turley, Esq., a “liberal” in the old fashioned sense rather than a leftist, wrote this about Obama’s refusal to disclose or even discuss His post-election plans for immigration “reform.”

[Y]esterday [October 23d] White House CBS reporter Major Garrett broke from the mainstream pack and pressed White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on a report that the Administration has order material for a “surge” of immigration IDs of up to 9 million in one year. Ernest called the questions “crazy” and encouraged everyone not to speculate . . . before the election obviously. [Emphasis added.]

[T]his Administration is openly withholding any information in its plans for unilateral presidential action despite the President’s pledge to take action after the election and before the New Year — only a matter of weeks. It is a cynical decision to prevent voters from being fully informed of the plans in a major policy area. Regardless of how one feels about immigration policies, it should be condemned by people across the political spectrum. [Emphasis added.]

More importantly, the media has to show some independence from the White House in this and other stories. Garrett is one of the few such reporters to press the point. His extraordinary exchange however was not covered by the mainstream press and, once again, the stonewalling on the issue was again dropped. I expect given the record of the White House corp, such questioning from Garrett does seem “crazy.” After all, disclosure of such plans might harm the White House in the upcoming election and only a “crazy” reporter would pursue such a story. [Emphasis added.]

Get your excuses for not voting prepared if you like the status quo:

If you don’t like the status quo, vote and remind your friends to do so as well.

Conclusions

From the P5+1 negotiations with Iran and the failure of our “leaders” even to pause on their path to Iranian nukes due to Iran’s abysmal human rights record, its support for terrorism and the dangers Iran already poses for what’s left of the free and democratic world — and will pose in even greater measure with nukes — to rampant antisemitism to Islamic attacks on and persecution of Christians qua Christians, to domestic Islamic terrorism to voting fraud, far too many are either insane or extraordinarily devious. Those who appear to be insane either do not recognize the nature of our enemies or do not care. Some are perhaps complicit.

As this insidious form of insanity spreads we seem to have no antidote more powerful than reason and common sense, both increasingly rare. Will our enemies have to provide a more effective antidote in the form of an attack on the United States so severe, clear and obvious that insanity can no longer be ignored even by our lunatics?

Categories: Antisemitism, Executions, Gaza, Iran, Iranian nukes, Iraq, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Obama, Syria war, Terrorism
Tags: Election fraud, human rights, Iran, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Nukes

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The US War Against ISIS Is Barely Degrading, Certainly Not Destroying The Militants

October 25, 2014

The US War Against ISIS Is Barely Degrading, Certainly Not Destroying The Militants, International Business Times, Erin Banco , October 24, 2014

kobane

Smoke rises over Syrian town of Kobani after an airstrike, as seen from the Mursitpinar crossing on the Turkish border, Oct. 21, 2014. Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach

The U.S.-led air campaign in Syria has killed 521 Islamic State fighters in the past month, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group monitoring the civil war. But the heavy death toll does not mean the United States is winning its fight to “degrade and destroy” the Sunni extremist group. Experts say that won’t happen until the group also known as ISIS loses support and its fighters begin defecting.

“Until that happens, we will not see a quantum shift in the war in Iraq and Syria,” said Wayne White, a former deputy director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia.

Since June, ISIS has gained control of large swaths of land that stretch from Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border to the outskirts of Baghdad. The group is currently waging campaigns in several different areas of both countries, but has focused its forces in recent weeks on capturing the Kurdish city of Kobani. As a result, the U.S.-led air campaign has targeted several ISIS convoys and strongholds in Kobani and is air-dropping weapons and other resources to the Syrian Kurds fighting there.

“Like many aerial campaigns you can cite from history, it is a gradual process,” White said. “ISIS has a finite number of heavy weapons, and they are being picked off. And ISIS is losing a lot of combatants that are not easily replaced. ISIS is driven to expand its domain, and every time it tries to expand it is putting its fighters out in the open where they can be taken out. The question is: How long will the degrading take until you get to the destruction … a long time.”

Witnesses on the ground in Kobani told International Business Times that ISIS had been pushed back from the center of the city, but that the fighting was still raging on the outskirts. Meanwhile, ISIS is making gains in other parts of Syria and in Baghdad. According to the Syrian Observatory, ISIS fighters seized Tal Shaer, a town just west of Kobani, this week. And in Baghdad, the Sunni militant group has claimed responsibility for several car and suicide bomb attacks that have killed dozens of people in the last two weeks.

The uptick in ISIS attacks since June in Iraq has not only caused hundreds of civilian deaths, but has also infiltrated the psyche of the Iraqi people, especially those living in the capital, Noof Assi, a woman from Baghdad, told the International Business Times.

At the beginning of the ISIS campaign, “Baghdad looked like a ghost city,” Assi said. “People were staying at home or fleeing, saving food and fuel.”

Now, she said, people in Baghdad are used to the ISIS insurgency. Discussions in shops, cafes and restaurants have shifted. No longer are Iraqis talking about the destruction that ISIS is inflicting on the country. Now, people are talking about how many people are beginning to support the militant group.

“There are people talking about people of Mosul,” she said of the big northern city. “Some people are saying that they betrayed Iraq and welcomed ISIS.”

The State Department and White House have both confirmed that part of the U.S. strategy to fight ISIS is to undercut its propaganda and recruitment, especially on social media. So far, though, the U.S. has not launched a successful countercampaign.

In September, the State Department produced and distributed a graphic mock Islamic State propaganda video via social media. The video, “Welcome to ISIS Land,” was published by the State Department’s Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications.

The mock video showed graphic images of the militant group committing war crimes that have been widely reported over the past two months and that are now being investigated by the United Nations. The video looks similar to those ISIS promotes on social media like Twitter and YouTube. Despite the counterpropaganda drive, ISIS continues to expand on social media, and more and more Western fighters, as well as Iraqi and Syrian civilians, are joining up.

While some experts say the only way the U.S. will defeat ISIS is by sending in ground troops, others say more credit should be given to the Syrian Kurdish fighters — who now seems to be only force on the ground in Iraq and Syria that is regaining territory ISIS took over in prior months.

“They are the only boots on the ground in the entire Iraqi-Syrian theater capable of standing up to ISIS,” White said. “They are absolutely fierce fighters. The Iraqi Kurds are not.”

Categories: Air strikes, Baghdad, Combat troops, Iraq, Islamic State, Kobani, Kurdish fighters, Obama, Syria
Tags: Baghdad, ground troops, Iraq, Islamic State, Kobani, Syria

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The Poison Tree

October 24, 2014

The Poison Tree, Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti, October 24, 2014

(Rather than chopping the tree down, we are watering and fertilizing it. — DM)

APTOPIX Mideast Israel US

Arab protesters wave Islamic flags in front of the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel / AP

Six years into the Obama presidency, not only has the vocabulary of jihad been removed from official rhetoric and counterterrorism policy, but troops have been removed from Iraq, troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, the administration has condemned Israeli settlement activity while coddling Hamas’ backers in Ankara and Doha, “torture” has been banned, the White House intends to close Guantanamo unilaterally, Hosni Mubarak was abandoned in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the president is desperate for a partnership with the Islamic theocracy of Iran.

We must recognize the global and unitary nature of the threat. We must recognize that there is only one way to deal with a poison tree: You chop it down.

***************

Last month, addressing the U.N. General Assembly, Benjamin Netanyahu made a connection between the Islamic State and Hamas. These terrorist entities, Netanyahu said, have a lot in common. Separated by geography, they nonetheless share ideology and tactics and goals: Islamism, terrorism, the destruction of Israel, and the establishment of a global caliphate.

And yet, Netanyahu observed, the very nations now campaigning against the Islamic State treated Hamas like a legitimate combatant during last summer’s Israel-Gaza war. “They evidently don’t understand,” he said, “that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree.”

The State Department dismissed Netanyahu’s metaphor. “Obviously, we’ve designated both as terrorist organizations,” said spokesman Jen Psaki. “But ISIL poses a different threat to Western interests and to the United States.”

Psaki was wrong, of course. She’s always wrong. And, after the events of the last 48 hours, there ought not to be any doubt as to just how wrong she was. As news broke that a convert to Islam had murdered a soldier and stormed the Canadian parliament, one read of another attack in Jerusalem, where a Palestinian terrorist ran his car over passengers disembarking from light rail, injuring seven, and killing 3-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun, who held a U.S. passport.

Islamic State, al Qaeda, Hamas—these awful people are literally baby killers. And yet they produce a remarkable amount of dissension, confusion, willful ignorance, and moral equivalence on the part of the men and women who conduct U.S. foreign policy. “ISIL is not ‘Islamic,’” President Obama said of the terrorist army imposing sharia law across Syria and Iraq. “Obviously, we’re shaken by it,” President Obama said of the attack in Canada. “We urge all sides to maintain calm and avoid escalating tensions in the wake of this incident,” the State Department said of the murder of a Jewish child.

“Not Islamic,” despite the fact that the Caliphate grounds its barbarous activities in Islamic law. “Shaken,” not stirred to action. “All sides,” not the side that targets civilians again and again and again. The evasions continue. They create space for the poison tree to grow.

The persistent denial of the ideological unity of Islamic terrorism—the studied avoidance of politically incorrect facts that has characterized our response to the Ft. Hood shooting, the Benghazi attack, the Boston Marathon bombing, the march of the caliphate across Syria and Iraq, and the crimes of Hamas—is not random. Behind it is a set of ideas with a long history, and with great purchase among the holders of graduate degrees who staff the Department of Justice, the National Security Council, Foggy Bottom, and the diplomatic corps. These ideas are why, in the words of John McCain, the terrorists “are winning, and we’re not.”

A report by Katherine Gorka of the Council on Global Security, “The Bad Science Behind America’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy,” analyzes the soil from which the poison tree draws strength. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, Gorka writes, U.S. policymakers have faced a dilemma: “how to talk about Islam in a way that is instructive in dealing with Muslims who are enemies but not destructive to those who are friends.” For decades, the preferred solution has been to declare America’s friendship with Islam, and to distinguish between jihadists and everyday Muslims.

One of Gorka’s earliest examples of this policy comes from former Assistant Secretary of State Edward Djerejian, who said in 1992, “The U.S. government does not view Islam as the next ‘ism’ confronting the West or threatening world peace.” Similar assurances were uttered by officials in the Clinton administration, by Clinton himself, and by President George W. Bush. The policy was meant to delegitimize terrorism by denying the terrorists’ claim that they are acting according to religious precepts. “Policymakers believed that by tempering their language with regard to Islam, they might forestall further radicalization of moderate Muslims and indeed even potentially win moderates into the American circle of friendship.”

George W. Bush, Gorka notes, combined his rhetorical appeals to moderate Muslims with denunciations of the immorality of terrorism and illiberalism. And yet, for the government at large, downplaying the religious and ideological component to terrorist activities became an end in itself.

The Global War on Terror was renamed the “global struggle against violent extremism.” In 2008 the Department of Homeland Security published a lexicon of terrorism that said, “Our terminology must be properly calibrated to diminish the recruitment efforts of extremists who argue that the West is at war with Islam.” State Department guidelines issued in 2008 said, “Never use the terms jihadist or mujahedeen to describe a terrorist.”

Then came Obama. As a candidate, he stressed his experiences in Indonesia and Pakistan. He told Nick Kristof of the New York Times that the call of the muezzin is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” In one of his first major addresses as president, he traveled to Cairo to inaugurate a new beginning with the Muslim world. His counterterrorism adviser, now director of the CIA, called jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” and referred to Jerusalem as “Al Quds.”

The change in the manner in which the government treated Islamism was profound. “Whereas the 9/11 Commission report, published under the presidency of George W. Bush in July 2004 as a bipartisan product, had used the word Islam 322 times, Muslim 145 times, jihad 126 times, and jihadist 32 times,” Gorka writes, “the National Intelligence Strategy of the United States, issued by the Obama administration in August 2009, used the term Islam 0 times, Muslim 0 times, jihad 0 times.” The omission is stunning.

For Bush, terrorism consisted of immoral deeds committed by evil men animated by anti-Western ideology. Obama downplayed such judgmental language. He preferred an interpretation of terrorism as discrete acts of wrongdoing by extremists, driven by resentments and grievances such as the American failure to establish a Palestinian state, American support for secular Arab dictatorships, American forces in the Middle East, U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, and, infamously, an anti-Islamic YouTube video. “The logic that follows,” Gorka writes, “is that once those grievances are addressed, the extremism will subside.”

Some logic. Six years into the Obama presidency, not only has the vocabulary of jihad been removed from official rhetoric and counterterrorism policy, but troops have been removed from Iraq, troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, the administration has condemned Israeli settlement activity while coddling Hamas’ backers in Ankara and Doha, “torture” has been banned, the White House intends to close Guantanamo unilaterally, Hosni Mubarak was abandoned in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the president is desperate for a partnership with the Islamic theocracy of Iran.

The result? The Islamic State rules Mosul, threatens Baghdad, and has conquered half of Syria as Bashar Assad gasses the other half. Libya has collapsed into tribal warfare. Egypt has gone from military dictatorship to Islamic authoritarianism and back again. An Islamic strongman rules Turkey, Hamas murders with impunity, Al Jazeera broadcasts anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda around the world, and the Taliban are biding time in Afghanistan. Not only is al Qaeda not on the run, it governs more territory than at any point since 2001. It is once again the “strong horse,” attracting jihadists to its crusade who inevitably turn their attention to the West.

“Without an ideological catalyst,” Gorka writes, “grievances remain merely grievances. They are dull and banal. They only transform into acts of transcendental violence when ignited by Sayyid Qutb or Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. It is the narrative of Holy War that gives value to local grievances, not the other way around.” Before we can hope to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State or the al Qaeda movement, we must recognize the poison tree of jihad for what it is. We must recognize the global and unitary nature of the threat. We must recognize that there is only one way to deal with a poison tree: You chop it down.

Categories: Caliphate, Hamas, Iraq, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Palestinians, Netanyahu, Obama, Syria, Terrorism, Two state solution
Tags: Hamas, Hosni Mubarak, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamic theocracy, Muslim Brotherhood, Netanyahu

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The War on ISIS: More Than One Battle

October 23, 2014

The War on ISIS: More Than One Battle, Wall Street Journal, Max Boot, October 22, 2014

Kobani no longer looks to be in imminent danger of falling. It is even possible that ISIS will give up the fight and pull out. If this happens, it will certainly be good news. The remaining residents of Kobani would be saved from slaughter and their relief would give a moral boost to anti-ISIS efforts. But any celebration should be muted. Winning at Kobani will be no more devastating to ISIS than was the American victory at Khe Sanh to North Vietnam.

The problem is that ISIS can readily replace the fighters it loses in Kobani, and heavy weapons are not essential to its guerrilla style of warfare. Even as ISIS is losing a little ground at Kobani, it is gaining strength elsewhere.

Only 12 U.S. advisory teams have been deployed and only at the brigade level. The other 14 Iraqi brigades identified by the U.S. as “reliable partners” have no advisers at all. None of these advisers, moreover, is allowed to accompany Iraqi troops into combat, where they can be most effective. The U.S. also is not stepping in to offer direct assistance and training to the Sunnis of Anbar Province to allow them to fight back against ISIS, as they did against al Qaeda in Iraq in 2007-08.

Through the limited application of air power—a mere handful of daily strikes—the U.S. may achieve tactical progress to blunt ISIS’s momentum. But Khe Sanh showed the limits of tactical military victories if they are not married to larger strategic gains—and those are elusive in Iraq and Syria today

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On Jan. 21, 1968, North Vietnamese troops attacked the U.S. Marine garrison at Khe Sanh in South Vietnam near the border with Laos. A 77-day siege ensued, with the U.S. pouring in ever more firepower. The U.S. would drop 100,000 tons of bombs because Gen. William Westmoreland was determined that Khe Sanh not become another defeat like Dien Bien Phu, which had effectively ended France’s colonial presence in Vietnam 14 years earlier.

And it didn’t. Eventually the siege was relieved and the attacking forces melted away, having suffered more than 5,000 fatalities (while the defenders lost about 350 men).

Today, no one except some veterans and military historians remembers Khe Sanh because in the end it had scant strategic significance: Even though the U.S. won the battle, it lost the war. Not long after having “liberated” Khe Sanh, the U.S. dismantled the base because it served little purpose.

This history is worth mentioning because of the parallels, limited and inexact to be sure, between Khe Sanh and Kobani, a Kurdish town in northern Syria. Jihadist forces of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, have been besieging Kobani for weeks, and the U.S. has been ramping up efforts to prevent the town from falling. U.S. airstrikes have apparently taken a heavy toll, eliminating ISIS fighters, artillery, armored vehicles and other heavy weapons. Airstrikes have now been joined by airdrops of weapons and ammunition to the Kurdish defenders. Turkey, which had hitherto not lifted a finger to save Kobani, announced Monday that it would allow Iraqi Kurdish fighters to traverse Turkish territory to join in defending the town.

Kobani no longer looks to be in imminent danger of falling. It is even possible that ISIS will give up the fight and pull out. If this happens, it will certainly be good news. The remaining residents of Kobani would be saved from slaughter and their relief would give a moral boost to anti-ISIS efforts. But any celebration should be muted. Winning at Kobani will be no more devastating to ISIS than was the American victory at Khe Sanh to North Vietnam.

The problem is that ISIS can readily replace the fighters it loses in Kobani, and heavy weapons are not essential to its guerrilla style of warfare. Even as ISIS is losing a little ground at Kobani, it is gaining strength elsewhere.

Its fighters are advancing in Anbar Province with little resistance. They are poised on the outskirts of Baghdad; soon they may be within mortar range of Baghdad International Airport, whose closure would be a disaster. On Monday alone, its car bombs and suicide bombers in Baghdad and Karbala claimed at least 33 lives, a day after a suicide bomber in Baghdad killed at least 28 people in a Shiite mosque. The pattern is reminiscent of the terrorist atrocities perpetrated in 2006 by al Qaeda in Iraq, ISIS’s predecessor, aimed at rallying Sunnis to the terrorists’ side by provoking a civil war with Shiites.

As in those dark days, Sunni extremism is provoking an equally extreme response from Iranian-backed Shiites. The replacement of Nouri al-Maliki as Iraq’s prime minister with Haidar al-Abadi, an apparently less sectarian Shiite, was a small step in the right direction for which the Obama administration deserves credit. But there is little reason to think the Iranian hold over a substantial portion of the Iraqi state has been broken.

The Iraqi Parliament has approved ministers to run the two security ministries—Interior and Defense. While the Defense pick is Sunni technocrat Khalid al-Obedi, the Interior pick is far more worrisome: Mohammed Salem al-Ghabban is a member of the Badr Organization, one of the chief Iranian-backed Shiite militias that is further destabilizing Iraq with attacks on Sunni neighborhoods. The likelihood is that Mr. Ghabban will take orders from his ultimate sponsor, Gen. Qasem Suleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force.

This means that the Interior Ministry, in charge of Iraq’s police forces, will become, if it is not already, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Shiite militias and their Iranian string-pullers. This happened in 2006 when the Iraqi police became notorious for kidnapping and torturing Sunnis. This helped bring Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war and will do so again if not checked.

The only way to counteract the Iranian capture of the Interior Ministry is to bolster the Iraqi army as an independent fighting force, but there is little sign of this occurring. Shiite sectarians have also deeply penetrated the army and the U.S. has little ability to counteract this insidious development because President Obama will not send a large number of “embedded” advisers to work alongside army units that remain more professional and less politicized.

Only 12 U.S. advisory teams have been deployed and only at the brigade level. The other 14 Iraqi brigades identified by the U.S. as “reliable partners” have no advisers at all. None of these advisers, moreover, is allowed to accompany Iraqi troops into combat, where they can be most effective. The U.S. also is not stepping in to offer direct assistance and training to the Sunnis of Anbar Province to allow them to fight back against ISIS, as they did against al Qaeda in Iraq in 2007-08.

In Syria the U.S. is also doing little to oppose the Assad dictatorship, leaving it free to continue attacks on areas held by moderate militias affiliated with the Free Syrian Army. This, too, is feeding the radicalization of Syria and Iraq by convincing many Sunnis, rightly or wrongly, that the U.S. is acquiescing to Iranian regional domination—and that ISIS is the only reliable defender that Sunnis have. That impression will be strengthened if the Obama administration reaches a deal with Iran next month that will allow Tehran to maintain its capacity to develop a nuclear weapon.

Through the limited application of air power—a mere handful of daily strikes—the U.S. may achieve tactical progress to blunt ISIS’s momentum. But Khe Sanh showed the limits of tactical military victories if they are not married to larger strategic gains—and those are elusive in Iraq and Syria today.

Categories: Air strikes, Baghdad, Combat troops, Intelligence, Iraq, Iraqi military, Islamic State, Obama, Syria
Tags: Baghdad, boots on the ground, Iraq, Kobani, Syria

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US Embassy in Baghdad Shelled With Rockets: Reports

October 22, 2014

US Embassy in Baghdad Shelled With Rockets: Reports, RIANOVISTI, October 22,2014

(Please see also BREAKING: Reports Say ISIS Hits US Embassy in Baghdad with Mortars for background information. — DM)

Embasy Baghdad

The US Embassy in Iraq located in central Baghdad has been shelled with rockets.

BAGHDAD, October 22 (RIA Novosti) – The US Embassy in Iraq located in central Baghdad has been shelled with rockets, Al-Mustakillah news agency reported Wednesday citing a security source.

“On Tuesday night the US Embassy was hit with three rockets. They were fired from a park area in the Dora district [in southern Baghdad],” the agency’s source said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Al-Sumaria TV channel reported a mortar shelling of the so-called “green zone” in the center of the capital, housing government buildings and foreign missions. Security forces surrounded the area to repel a potential attack.

Categories: Baghdad, Green Zone, Iraq, Islamic State, U.S. Embassy
Tags: Baghdad, Green Zone, Iraq, U.S. Embassy

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What do Kobani airdrops mean for regional politics?

October 21, 2014

What do Kobani airdrops mean for regional politics? Al-Monitor, Amberin Zaman, October 20, 2014

Smoke and flames rise over Syrian town of Kobani after an airstrike

Smoke and flames rise over the Syrian town of Kobani after an airstrike, as seen from the Mursitpinar crossing on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern town of Suruc, Oct. 20, 2014. The United States told Turkey that a US military airdrop of arms to Syrian Kurds battling the Islamic State in Kobani was a response to a crisis situation and did not represent a change in US policy. (photo by REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

The US will use its new leverage over the PYD to push the Kurds to engage with factions opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, particularly the Free Syrian Army. The YPG’s existing battleground alliance with various rebel factions will, therefore, probably expand.

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On Oct. 19, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that it had conducted multiple airdrops near the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, which has remained under siege by Islamic State (IS) fighters for more than a month. CENTCOM said US C-13 cargo planes had made multiple drops of arms, ammunition, and medical supplies provided by Kurdish authorities in Iraq. The move is set to have a profound effect on regional balances between Turkey, the Kurds and the United States that will likely reverberate in Tehran and in Damascus as well.

For several weeks now, the US and its allies have been bombing IS positions around Kobani. But the delivery of weapons takes the de facto alliance between the Syrian Kurds and the United States to a new level.

Turkey, which borders Kobani, is best positioned to help the Syrian Kurds. But the country’s ruling Justice and Development (AKP) party has spurned repeated Syrian Kurdish demands to allow weapons and fighters to cross through Turkey into the Syrian Kurdish enclave. On Oct. 18, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), whose armed wing the People’s Protection Units (YPG) is battling IS in Kobani, were “the same as the PKK. “It’s a terrorist organization. It would be very, very wrong to expect us to openly say ‘yes’ to our NATO ally America to give this kind of [armed] support [to the PYD],” Erdogan declared.

Erdogan was referring to the PYD’s close links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting on and off for self-rule inside Turkey since 1984. The PKK is on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, and until last month successive US administrations refused to have any contact either with the PKK or the PYD. But the PKK and the YPG’s effectiveness against IS both in Iraq and Syria has triggered a paradigm shift in US strategic thinking. The US and the Syrian Kurds are now allies in the war against IS.

US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Jakarta, Indonesia that while the Obama administration understood Turkey’s concerns, it would have been “irresponsible” and “morally difficult” not to support the Syrian Kurds in their fight against IS.

Kerry said IS had chosen to “make this a ground battle, attacking a small group of people there who, while they are an offshoot group of the folks that our friends the Turks oppose, they are valiantly fighting ISIL and we cannot take our eye off the prize here.” Kerry stressed, however, that it was “a momentary effort” and that the US had “made it very clear” to Turkey that it “is not a shift in the policy of the United States.”

Kerry’s words came hours after US President Barack Obama spoke over the telephone with Erdogan about Kobani. News emerged soon after that Turkey would be allowing Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters to cross through Turkey into Kobani carrying fresh weapons for the YPG. How in the space of 48 hours did Turkey go from calling the PYD terrorists to opening an arms corridor for them?

As analysts ponder these dizzying changes, here a few immediate factors to consider:

Turkey could have led the effort to support anti-IS forces in Kobani by letting arms and fighters through its borders weeks ago. This would have bolstered the peace process between Turkey and its own Kurds, while averting the public relations disaster caused by images of Turkish tanks and soldiers looking on as the Syrian Kurds battled IS in Kobani, thereby reinforcing claims that “Turkey supports IS.
The fact that Turkey was forced into opening a corridor to Kobani only after the US informed Ankara that it would go ahead with the airdrops anyway only increases doubts about Turkey’s commitment to working with its Western partners. It also plays into the hands of Erdogan’s domestic rivals, who will now say he is America’s poodle and that the US is using the PKK to tame Turkey.
One big question is whether the recent days’ events mean that the PYD will move away from the PKK. The likely answer is that the PKK will seek to move closer to the US. The PKK has already established a channel of communication with the US via the PYD in Syria, and is also fighting alongside US-supported Kurdish peshmerga forces in Iraq. Any attempt to drive a wedge between the PYD and the PKK is doomed to fail. Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned founder and leader of their PKK, commands the loyalty of Syrian and Turkish Kurds alike.
Any US-PKK dialogue would make the PKK less likely to resume violence against the Turkish army, as this would tarnish its burgeoning legitimacy. Turkey could yet turn the situation to its advantage and make goodwill gestures to the Syrian Kurds. These could include opening the sealed border with the PYD-controlled town of Serkaniye (Ras al Ain). The fact that US drones flew drone reconnaissance missions over Kobani out of the Incirlik air base has gone largely unnoticed in the media. So Turkey actually has helped, but chose not to advertise this.
The Kurds adeptly used the media and global public opinion — which depicted them as the region’s secular, pro-Western force, a space formerly occupied by Turkey — to draw the US into the battle for Kobani. The battle for Kobani then became a symbol of the contest between IS and the coalition, one that the US could no longer afford to lose. Moreover, the concentration of IS forces around Kobani allowed the US to inflict heavy losses on IS fighters.
Iraqi Kurdish President Massoud Barzani is probably unhappy about US engagement with the PYD/PKK, which he views as rivals. But, unlike Turkey, he has turned the situation to his own advantage by projecting himself as a benevolent leader who has aided fellow Kurds in their time of need.
The US will use its new leverage over the PYD to push the Kurds to engage with factions opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, particularly the Free Syrian Army. The YPG’s existing battleground alliance with various rebel factions will, therefore, probably expand.
Is the de facto non-aggression pact between the Syrian regime and the Kurds coming unstuck? It’s too early to say, because the US insists that its military intervention in Syria is limited to countering IS. The Kurds are likely to continue to hedge their bets for as long as they can.
And what of the PYD’s other primary benefactor, Iran? Will its friendship with the Americans anger the clerics? Much will depend on whether the US and Iran can reach a deal over Iran’s nuclear program. Should the talks fail, the PKK may become an instrument of US policy to be used against Iran.
Any alliance in the Middle East should never be taken for granted.

Categories: Air strikes, Free Syrian Army, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Obama, Syria, Turkey
Tags: Air strikes, Free Syrian Army, Iraq, Kobani, Kurds, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Syria, Turkey, U.S.

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