(How about naming the enemy, Islamism? That would not be suitably multicultural. Here are some of the names for the U.S. military operation suggested by Foreign Policy Situation Report readers (via e-mail):
The response to my request for names of the US mission against IS was overwhelming. It’s hard to draw any conclusions from the names offered, but I will say this: SitRep has an engaged, intelligent and global audience (I got responses from all over the world), and the names offered up show a huge disparity in opinion. Some show resolve, while others reflect a growing criticism – one might say cynicism – of Obama’s strategy. Some of the best are below; email me if you’d like to receive the full list.
Operation Empty Chair; Operation Oops, Sorry About That; Operation Good Intentions; Operation Seriously? Again?; Operation Passive-Aggressive; Operation Coalition of the Dragged Kicking and Screaming; Operation Did I Leave My Keys Here?; Operation Slam Dunk; Operation IS you IS, or IS you Ain’t? Operation Syri-ous about Iraqi Freedom; and Operation Iraqi Freedom 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Make sense. How about “Inherent Dithering?” — DM)
US strategy failing as ISIS militants march on
More than two months after the U.S. first launched airstrikes against the Islamic State, the military mission has a name: “Inherent Resolve.”
A senior military source confirmed to Fox News that “Inherent Resolve” officially has been chosen as the title of the operation.
The name comes after questions were raised about why the administration had not named a mission that has escalated to involve several coalition partners and hundreds of airstrikes in both Iraq and Syria.
As of Sunday, the U.S. had conducted nearly 400 strikes in both countries. The number has risen since then – on Wednesday, the U.S. military said it launched another 18 airstrikes overnight near the contested Syrian city of Kobani, intensifying an air campaign against Islamic State militants’ efforts to capture the city near the Turkish border.
Why the mission was not named until now is unclear.
Every U.S. military intervention since the invasion of Panama in 1989, code-named Operation Just Cause, has had a name.
Even the operation to combat Ebola in West Africa was given an operational name the same day it was announced: Operation United Assistance.
An unnamed Defense official was quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal report suggesting the administration was reluctant to name the anti-ISIS mission because: “If you name it, you own it. … And they don’t want to own it.”
But Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby rejected that claim.
He said earlier this month that officials were considering a potential title. Kirby explained that one reason for waiting to name the operation has to do with the complex evolution of the mission.
(The UN’s “responsibility to protect” doctrine now applies principally to groups favored by the multicultural international community, such as the “Palestinians” from wicked Israel, disfavored by the international community. Those needing protection from Islamic terror must look elsewhere. But where? The U.S. of Obama?– DM)
Illustration on the illusion of “Responsibility to Protect” by Linas Garsys
[I]’s ludicrous to propose that the U.N. Security Council — whose permanent members include neo-Soviet Russia and anti-democratic China — should be vested with the authority to pass judgment on the legitimacy of such missions.
While the Islamic State is currently attracting the most attention, it is the Islamic Republic of Iran — which has been using proxies to kill Americans on and off for the past 35 years — that could soon have nuclear weapons as well as missiles to deliver them to targets anywhere in the world. Hezbollah and other terrorist groups offer an alternative means of delivery. Iran’s radical Shia rulers are more sophisticated than the Sunni jihadis displaying disembodied heads on pikes. However, their goals differ little from those of their rivals.
[T]he notion of an international community that can prevent or halt mass atrocities is a chimera.
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Remember R2P? Not to be confused with R2-D2 (a robotic character in the “Star Wars” movies), “Responsibility to Protect” was an international “norm” proposed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan following the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the mass murders in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica a year later. The idea was for the “international community” to assume an obligation to intervene, militarily if necessary, to prevent or halt mass atrocities.
Why has R2P not been invoked to stop the slaughters being carried out in Syria and Iraq? Why isn’t it mentioned in regard to the Syrian-Kurdish city of Kobani, which, as I write this, may soon be overrun by barbarians fighting for what they call the Islamic State?
Here’s the story: In 2009, Mr. Annan’s successor, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, issued a report on “implementing” R2P. The foreign-policy establishment cheered. For example, Louise Arbour, a former U.N. high commissioner for human tights, called R2P “the most important and imaginative doctrine to emerge on the international scene for decades.” Anne-Marie Slaughter, an academic who served under Hillary Clinton at the State Department, went further, hailing R2P as “the most important shift in our conception of sovereignty since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.”
In 2011, President Obama cited R2P as his primary justification for using military force to prevent Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi from attacking the opposition stronghold of Benghazi.
If that was the apogee of R2P, the nadir was not far off. The intervention in Libya has led to chaos and bloodshed with no end in sight. Meanwhile, in Syria, four years ago this spring, Bashar Assad brutally cracked down on peaceful protesters.
Mr. Obama made Mr. Assad’s removal American policy but overruled the recommendation of his national security advisers to assist Syrian nationalist opposition groups. Civil war erupted. Self-proclaimed jihadis from around the world flocked to Syria to fight on behalf of the Sunnis. The opposition was soon dominated by the al Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate, and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL), whose leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, broke with al Qaeda and, audaciously, declared himself caliph, or supreme leader.
As for Mr. Assad, he is supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, deploying both its elite Quds Force (designated in 2007 by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization) and Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based militia loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Russia also backs Mr. Assad, even supplying on-the-ground military intelligence specialists.
With no U.N.-approved R2P effort to rescue the innocent civilians of the region from these brutal forces, the death toll in Syria and Iraq has topped 200,000, and the number of refugees is in the millions.
Failed experiments, like crises, should not go to waste. Among the lessons to be learned from the R2P debacle: First, the notion of an international community that can prevent or halt mass atrocities is a chimera. If such work is going to get done, the United States has to do it, perhaps supported by a coalition of the willing and, with few exceptions, not particularly able. Second, it’s ludicrous to propose that the U.N. Security Council — whose permanent members include neo-Soviet Russia and anti-democratic China — should be vested with the authority to pass judgment on the legitimacy of such missions. Third, American power should be used primarily in pursuit of American interests. Sometimes that will include humanitarian interventions, but that’s a decision for Americans to make.
This, too, should be clear: While the Islamic State is currently attracting the most attention, it is the Islamic Republic of Iran — which has been using proxies to kill Americans on and off for the past 35 years — that could soon have nuclear weapons as well as missiles to deliver them to targets anywhere in the world. Hezbollah and other terrorist groups offer an alternative means of delivery. Iran’s radical Shia rulers are more sophisticated than the Sunni jihadis displaying disembodied heads on pikes. However, their goals differ little from those of their rivals.
In response to this dire and deteriorating situation, Mr. Obama should be instructing his advisers to present him with a range of strategic options. I’d recommend conceptualizing the global conflict not as disconnected “overseas contingency operations,” and not as akin to World War II, but more like the Cold War. That is to say, the United States should plan for a long, low-intensity struggle. In particular, we should support those willing to fight the jihadis who threaten them.
Economic weapons can be powerful if used correctly, which has not been the case in the past. For example, though sanctions brought Iran’s rulers to the negotiating table, premature relief from sanctions pressure has encouraged Iranian intransigence as the talks proceeded.
Also long overdue is a serious war of ideas — it’s insufficient to leave that to Bill Maher and Ben Affleck on HBO. Bottom line: We are not really engaged in a conflict against “violent extremism” or even “terrorism.” What we’re confronting are ideologies derived from fundamentalist readings of Islamic scripture. Proponents of those ideologies stress the supremacy of one religion — much as communists stressed the supremacy of one class, and Nazis of one race. There is no reason to suppose that saying this clearly, rather than obfuscating, will radicalize Muslims not already favorably inclined toward killing infidels.
Our aim should be, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Obama, to “degrade and eventually defeat” jihadism. Nothing is more imperative than preventing Iran’s rulers from taking the next, short steps toward a nuclear-weapons capability that they clearly intend to use to threaten not just their neighbors, but also Americans for decades to come. For an American president, this is where the R2P needs to begin.
The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine (Arabic: حركة الجهاد الإسلامي في فلسطين,Harakat al-Jihād al-Islāmi fi Filastīn) known in the West as simply Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is a PalestinianIslamist organization formed in 1981 whose objective is the destruction of the State of Israel and the establishment of a sovereign, Islamic Palestinian state.[2] PIJ has been labelled a terrorist organisation by the United States,[3] the European Union,[4] the United Kingdom,[5]Japan,[6]Canada,[7]Australia,[8]New Zealand[9][10] and Israel. Iranis a major financial supporter of the PIJ.[11][12][13][14] Following the Israeli and Egyptian squeeze on Hamas in early 2014, PIJ has seen its power steadily increase with the backing of funds from Iran.[15] Its financial backing is believed to also come from Syria.
Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement Ramazan Abdullah arrived in Iran on Tuesday to confer with senior officials of the country on the latest security developments in region.
Abdullah, who arrived in Tehran last night, is to hold separate meetings with Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani, and Member of Iran’s Expediency Council Saeed Jalili later today.
He will also hold meetings with some other Iranian officials during his stay in the country.
Late in August 2012, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei asked participants in the 16th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran to pay special attention to the Palestinian issue, and called on the American backers of the Israeli regime to accept Iran’s proposal for holding a referendum in Palestine.
The Leader reminded the Zionists’ bloody occupation of Palestine over 6 decades ago, and blamed the Zionist regime for waging various wars, massacre and state-sponsored terrorism in the last decades.
He blamed the western world for supporting and defending the Zionist regime of Israel against the oppressed Palestinian nation.
The leader further renewed Iran’s solution to the Palestinian issue, calling for a “comprehensive referendum to be attended by all the indigenous residents of Palestine, including those refugees who have been away from their motherland for decades to determine the country’s fate”.
The Iranian supreme leader cautioned the US against the continue support and defense for the Zionist regime of Israel, reminding that decade-long support for the Israeli regime has incurred many costs and losses on the American people.
The leader called on the White House leaders to revise their Middle-East policy and “show courage and opt for the referendum solution” presented by Iran to put an end to the astronomical spending that has been inflicted on the American nation for its support for the Zionist regime of Israel.
To conclude his remarks, he urged for collective management of global issues, asking the NAM member states “not to be afraid of the bullying powers and remain loyal to their own causes”.
He reminded failure of communism and capitalism, and said the world is pregnant to new events, saying the Islamic Awakening and the US and Israeli failures in North Africa and the Middle-East are indicative of the very same fact.
(How serious are we and our coalition of the unwilling about at least degrading the Islamic State? — DM)
There is mixed news from the two fronts in Iraq and Syria where coalition airpower and indigenous partner forces on the ground are fighting Islamic State militants.
Near the Syrian border city of Kobani, reports indicate that Kurdish defenders are beginning to make some gains as they continue to defend the city against the ISIS onslaught. A key hill atop which ISIS fighters famously planted their flag late last week has reportedly been retaken by Kurdish forces.
“The advance came as the US said it had conducted 21 air strikes near the town, slowing down the IS advance,” the BBC revealed. “Tall Shair hill had been captured more than 10 days ago by IS militants.”
As ISIS retreated from the front near the Syrian-Turkish border, Kurdish forces made a series of gruesome discoveries.
“Refugees in Suruc, Turkey, have told how relatives and neighbors were beheaded by [ISIS] militants, while another spoke of how he had seen ‘hundreds’ of decapitated corpses in the besieged town,” The Independent reported on Tuesday.
Amin Fajar (38) a father-of-four who left Kobane and made it across the border and into Suruc, told a British newspaper: “I have seen tens, maybe hundreds, of bodies with their heads cut off.
“Others with just their hands or legs missing. I have seen faces with their eyes or tongues cut out – I can never forget it for as long as I live.”
The Daily Telegraph confirmed The Independent’s reporting about the activities in which ISIS engaged in the areas under their control:
“I have seen tens, maybe hundreds, of bodies with their heads cut off. Others with just their hands or legs missing. I have seen faces with their eyes or tongues cut out — I can never forget it for as long as I live,” Amin Fajar, a 38-year-old father of four, told the Daily Mail about the incredible scene in Kobane.
“They put the heads on display to scare us all.”
Another resident, 13-year-old Dillyar, watched as his cousin Mohammed, 20, was captured and beheaded by the black-clad jihadis as the pair tried to flee the battle-scarred town.
“They pushed him to the ground and sawed his head off, shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ ” the boy said. “I see it in my dreams every night and every morning I wake up and remember everything.”
This unconfirmed video featuring Kurdish fighters in Kobani, flagged by Jeff Gauvin, reveals the extent of the damage done to the city over the course of weeks of fighting.
While America’s partners on the ground are enjoying some successes in Syria, the dispatches from Iraq are far more grim.
There, ISIS continues its siege on Anbar province in preparation for an assault on the capital city of Baghdad. After taking control of a military training base on Monday, CNN reported that ISIS has surrounded one of the largest Iraqi airbases in the country on Tuesday and is preparing to take it.
“According to police sources,” CNN’s Ben Wedeman reported, “the Ayman Asad Airbase, which is about 110 miles to the west of Baghdad – one of the biggest bases in Anbar province – is now surrounded by ISIS fighters, and the people on the base are expecting an attack within the coming hours on that base.”
“We understand that there are Iraqi soldiers who have already fled the base,” Wedeman continued. “We were getting reports for several hours that some of the soldiers had left, shedding their uniforms, leaving their weapons behind.”
That depressing revelation should concern military advisors who believe Iraqi forces defending Baghdad can hold out against an ISIS assault on Baghdad despite outnumbering the attackers by a reported six-to-one ratio. These latest developments reinforce the position of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno who said with some trepidation recently he was only “somewhat” confident Baghdad could hold out.
(Some of this is directly pertinent to Israel and the Middle-East, some is pertinent only as U.S. politics affect both. It’s intended to be humorous, in a macabre way. — DM)
The Obama Nation’s multicultural society has become so politically correct and otherwise obtuse that words and phrases are used in any odd ways that may be desired — just as Humpty Dumpty did.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Here are a few examples and explanations.
Religion of peace. Amish? Quakers? Of course not: it’s Islam. Although the Islamic State, according to Obama, is not “Islamic,” the Islamic Republic of Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, et al — which are “Islamic” — are among the world’s foremost sponsors of Islamic terrorism. However, that is irrelevant because Muslims would be offended.
Here’s Andrew Klavan on how to survive an Islamic Quaker massacre:
Islamic extremists are extreme because they follow the Koran and demand Shari Law. So do “moderate Muslims.”
Bitter clingers are Christians in fly-over country who support the Second Amendment, while revering and trying to live according to their Bibles. Islamists who cling to their scimitars, guns and suicide vests, while revering and trying to live by their Korans and Sharia law, are not bitter clingers.
That’s racist! Unless you happen to be Black and therefore not conservative, see Great Uniter, below.
The science is settled and the debate is over. Ipse dixit.
Honest discussion. According to Attorney General Holder, Federal Dick, we need to have an honest discussion about race. “Honest” means agreeing with and favoring his people above all others. Or something.
Gender identity. Don’t like your gender? Try another; it’s probably on the house.
The war on women has long been fought byRepublican scoundrels, not by Democrats like Billie BJ Clinton or various Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. The (non Islamic) Islamic State and other (non Islamic) freaks may be fighting a war on women and girls, whom they capture as sex slaves, use and sell. However, few engaged in fierce combat against the war on women seem to notice or care, so the vile war on women must still be exclusively a Republican thing.
Feminism rejects the vast powers that men have over women by, among many other things, demanding free contraception and abortion on request. Although opposed by some bitter clingers, both are needed to empower women and girls to have sex as often and with as many men as they may desire, with no illnesses (such as pregnancy) or other adverse consequences. Is lesbianism the cure? Should it replace heterosexual nymphomania?
Truth. “Beauty is truth, Truth is beauty. This is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know.” Truth is beautiful only if it “sounds good” and can become a helpful sound bite to be memorized and used effortlessly.
Party of billionaires. This refers to Republicans. It does not mean Democrats who pay big bucks (up to $32,000 or more in some cases) to hear Obama tell them how filthy rich Republicans are ruining the country and how wonderful He is.
As Gwyneth Paltrow, an impoverished working mother who only “makes $16 million per movie,” said at a recent Obama fundraiser thrown at her humble shanty in California, Obama is
a president who would be studied for generations, and a role model for everyone of this generation.
“It would be wonderful if we were able to give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass,” she told the crowd.
Having been reminded of His greatness, attendees contribute more big bucks. It’s a good thing Obama is not a narcissist.
Great uniter refers to Obama, who has done more to unite Blacks against Whites than any other American President. (Conservative Blacks, such as Allen West, Ben Carson and others are White, not Black.) Great progress, Big Guy! Oh. He’s also a like, way cool military strategist.
Oh well. Try not to laugh cry; it may cause even more global warming, cooling, climate change and other demons not yet exploited discovered. As Jon Carson at BarackObama.com advised my spam filter just today,
We’re going to win on climate change. We don’t really have another option.
The question is how long will it take for the other side to take this fight seriously — to push the climate change deniers out of the way, and to defeat the powerful interest groups protecting the status quo.
We’re not waiting.
Climate change is already affecting Americans’ lives now — droughts, wildfires, and super storms have devastated every corner of the country.
“Fat cats” such as Tom Steyer, who is using his billions to impact multiple races in key states in ways that no ordinary voter can? Of course not. He’s the right kind of fat cat, meaning he is on the left. Plus, he controls NextGen and pays Lehane a lot of money to come up with its strategies. The libertarian-minded Koch brothers are the wrong kind of fat cats, so the billionaire-funded NextGen, led by consummate Beltway insider Chris Lehane, is pushing Democrat candidates to attack them. [Emphasis added.]
According to a linked article at Politico, the NextGen strategy of demonizing Republican “billionaires” seems to be working. So is the NextGen strategy:
According to the Lehane [NextGen] memo:
“In virtually every state NextGen is electorally engaged, there is an issue where the Republican candidate”s anti-climate, anti-basic science beliefs has manifested itself in policies with harmful consequences for all voters in state, including Republican voters. Our Republican Haircut Strategy – a precision focus on a specific harm in target Republican markets – we will seek to degrade Republican performance.” [Emphasis added.]
There’s a lot of loaded language in that — “anti-climate, anti-basic science beliefs” could describe anyone who ignores the fact that the climate scare-mongers keep being proved wrong, and that the data shows that the earth has not warmed in the past 15 to 18 years. Climate hysterics systematically rule out the role that the Sun plays in climate stability and change. Which is a very large thing to omit. And we cannot control it with any carbon trade scheme, tax, regulatory regime or any other means. [Emphasis added.]
Having nothing substantive to say, the Dems apparently attract voters by misleading and scaring them. The farce continues apace.
Israel has nothing to do with the slaughter in Libya or Syria or Iraq, but it is a constant reminder that the United States is indifferent to its friends while it courts its enemies. As Obama’s new policy against ISIS is shaping up, Iran is emerging as more of an ally in his eyes than is Israel.
*****************
Obama shuns our friends and courts our enemies.
Obama’s unfortunate Middle East legacy was predicated on six flawed assumptions:
(1) a special relationship with Turkey;
(2) distancing the U.S. from Israel;
(3) empathy for Islamist governments as exemplified by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt;
(4) a sort of non-aggression agreement with Iran;
(5) expecting his own multicultural fides to resonate in the region;
(6) pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Let us examine what has followed.
Obama’s special relationship with Recep Erdogan proved disastrous from the get-go, as Erdogan immediately began to provoke Israel and promote Islamist revolutionaries. Turkey today not only dislikes the U.S., but also poses an existential problem for the West. It is a NATO member that is antithetical to everything NATO stands for: the protection of human rights and constitutional government against the onslaught of aggressive totalitarian regimes. Turkey is now operating like the old Soviet Union in using murderous proxies to enhance its own stature; for example, it finds ISIS useful in whittling down the Kurds. As a rule of thumb, any enemy of Erdogan’s Turkey — Israel, the Kurds, Greek Cyprus, Greece, Egypt — is likely to be far more friendly to the U.S. and NATO than are other nations in the region. If Turkey were attacked by ISIS, Syria, Iran, or the Kurds, would Belgium or Greece send in its youth under NATO’s Article V?
What did ankle-biting Israel accomplish other than giving Hamas a green light to send rockets into the Jewish State in hopes that we might do something stupid like slow down scheduled arms shipments to Israel or shut down Ben Gurion Airport for a day? Israel has nothing to do with the slaughter in Libya or Syria or Iraq, but it is a constant reminder that the United States is indifferent to its friends while it courts its enemies. As Obama’s new policy against ISIS is shaping up, Iran is emerging as more of an ally in his eyes than is Israel.
Our once-close relationship with Egypt is ruined. All that is left is U.S. foreign aid to Cairo, largely because we have no idea of how not to give a near-starving Egypt assistance. Obama, under the guidance of Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice, gyrated from Mubarak to Morsi to el-Sisi, as the U.S. went loudly full circle, from disowning the pro-American kleptocrat to embracing the anti-American theocrat to humiliating the neutral autocrat.
Obama kept quiet when a million Iranian protesters hit the streets in 2009 to show their disgust with theocratic corruption. Apparently the American president thought the pro-American tendencies of the young protesters were proof of their inauthenticity. Or perhaps he saw them as sort of neocon democracy-pushers who would ruin his own chances of using his multicultural gymnastics to partner with Teheran.
Our serial deadlines for stopping uranium enrichment proved empty. Ending the tough sanctions has brought nothing but delight to the ayatollahs. In the view of Iraq and Syria, somehow the U.S. has become a de facto ally of the greatest enemy to peace in the region. Obama did not wish to stay in Iraq and work with the Sunni minority by pressuring the Maliki government. He threatened the Iranian puppet Assad and then backed off, and he ridiculed alike the dangers of the savage ISIS and the potential of the Free Syrian Army. Meanwhile, the U.S. is sort of bombing on and off to save the innocent and thereby helping the Iran–Assad–Hezbollah alliance.
In order to win over the Islamic street, Obama has tried almost everything to remind the Middle East that America is no longer run by a white male conservative from a Texas oil family. His multifaceted efforts have ranged from the fundamental to the ridiculous. The Al Arabiya interview, the Cairo Speech, the apology tour, the loud (but hypocritical) disparagement of the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols, the new euphemisms for jihadist terror, the multicultural trendy pronunciation of Talîban and Pâkistan, and references to his father’s religion and his own middle name resulted in American popularity ratings in many Middle Eastern countries lower than during the Bush administration. In the Middle East, the only thing worse than being unapologetically proud of past U.S. foreign policy is being obsequiously ashamed of it.
There were no Americans dying in Iraq when Barack Obama pulled the remaining troops out in order to win a reelection talking point. Iraq was a functioning state, saved by the successful U.S. surge. That’s why both Obama and Joe Biden praised the post-surge calm. When Obama bragged that he had ended the Iraq War (which was ended in early 2009) and then brought our troops home, he gave the Maliki government a green light to hound its Sunni enemies and reboot civil strife in Iraq, in a way that soon birthed ISIS. The same sort of Saigon 1975 scenario will follow in Kabul early next year, if Obama goes ahead with recalling all U.S. peacekeepers from Afghanistan. In just two flippant decisions, the prophet Barack Obama sowed the wind, and now we are reaping the whirlwind that followed from perceptions of U.S. decline, foreign-policy indifference, and a new void in the Middle East.
At this late date, amid the ruins of the last half-century’s foreign policy from Libya and Egypt to Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the U.S. should hunker down and distance itself from its enemies and grow closer to its few remaining friends. We need to arm the Kurds, and help them to save what is left of Kurdish Syria. We should inform Erdogan that either he joins the fight against ISIS or we will welcome a large and autonomous Kurdistan and would prefer that Turkeyleave NATO, as it should have long ago. We should forget the “peace process” and recognize that Hamas is an existential enemy of America and almost all our friends, and instead encourage an alignment of Egypt, the Kurds, Jordan, Israel, and a few of the saner Gulf States against both ISIS and the new and soon-to-be-nuclear Iranian Axis.
A final note. In this period of fluid jihadism and changing alliances, we should make it extremely difficult for anyone from most Middle Eastern countries (except the few friendly nations mentioned above) to receive a visa to reside in the U.S., a first step in reminding the region that its cheap anti-Americanism has at least a few consequences. And just because ISIS is primordial does not mean that Assad and Iran are not medieval. They are not our friends just because they are enemies of our enemies; they simply remain our enemies squabbling with other enemies.
The present chaos of the Middle East was caused by our withdrawal from Iraq and a widespread sense that the U.S. had forfeited its old responsibilities and interests, and was either on the side of the Arab Spring Islamists or indifferent to those who opposed them. Tragically, while order may soon return, it is likely to be as a sort of Cold War standoff between a pro-Russian, pro-Chinese — and very nuclear – Iranian bloc, and a Sunni Mesopotamian wasteland masquerading as a caliphate, run by beheaders and fueled by petrodollars, with assistance from Turkey and freelancing Wahhabi royals from the Gulf.
US strategy failing as ISIS militants march on
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