Posted tagged ‘Coalition’

« WarSclerotic home page
Newer Entries »

Saudi Government Daily: U.S. Secretly Cooperating With Iran At Arabs’ Expense

December 15, 2014

Saudi Government Daily: U.S. Secretly Cooperating With Iran At Arabs’ Expense, MEMRI, December 14, 2014

(Fact, fiction or a mix of both? — DM)

Yousuf Al-Kuwailit, who writes the editorials of the Saudi government daily Al-Rai, opined in a December 7, 2014 editorial that, despite the tension that has ostensibly prevailed between the U.S. and Iran ever since the Islamic Revolution, in practice there is secret cooperation between them. As part of this cooperation, he said, Iraq has become nothing but an arena for assuring the interests of these two countries, and Iran has been granted freedom of action in Syria and Lebanon.

Referring to the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, he said they were a farce that would end in contracts and deals, and perhaps even an alliance, between the two countries. He therefore called on the Arabs not to regard the U.S. as a reliable ally, and warned that the U.S. may force the Gulf states to reconcile with Iran, to the detriment of their interests.

The following are excerpts from the article: [1]

21428Yousuf Al-Kuwailit

“The U.S. appointed the Shah as policeman of the Arab Gulf, turned Iran into a base for conflict with the USSR, and provided Iran with up-to-date weaponry and a nuclear reactor. [Iran, for its part] attempted to take advantage of this situation, as it saw itself as a superpower. [Only] the strength of the USSR… prevented Iran from undertaking military adventures outside its own borders. With [the rise to power of Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini, despite everything that happened at the U.S. Embassy [in Tehran in 1980], when dozens of its staffers were taken hostage and [then-U.S. president Jimmy] Carter carried out a reckless and unsuccessful operation [in attempt to free them]… [despite all this] nothing spoiled the U.S.’s relationship with this country, which it considers one of its strategic and economic outposts by virtue of its location and its history. So the farce… about Iran’s nuclear reactors and non-conventional weapons has taken a clear and final direction, in the form of several deals [between the two countries]…

“Cyrus [the Great],[2] who attacked and destroyed the Arabs, is the spiritual father of the Nazi trend that has characterized Iran’s governments, whether secular or religious. Racial supremacism vis-à-vis the Arabs is a popular [Iranian] obsession. It exists and it is eternal, and even if the mullahs don black turbans [indicating that they are] descendants of the Prophet and have Arab roots, they do not really recognize these roots, but do this only in order to market their national policy to us, prior to marketing their religious school of thought [i.e. the Shi’a]. Anyone who thinks that diplomatic arrangements are aimed at anchoring coexistence between the Arabs and the Iranian ‘Aryans’ is disregarding the nature of the historical reasons [for the tension between the two sides] and its deep roots in the [Iranian] public mentality.

“In order to better understand the unfolding of events, [we need to realize that]  the U.S. and its allies set out the initial plan to divide the Arab [regions] a long time ago, and that the Sikes-Picot agreement is only the first outcome [of that plan]. [We must also realize] that handing over Iraq [to Iran], and annexing Syria and later Lebanon to it, and the [silent] agreement [between the two countries] that Iran would have a free hand in these countries – all these  are only a prelude to  more dangerous activity.

“[Accordingly], relying on the U.S. or thinking it a reliable ally without properly understanding the strategic changes and aims, place us in a situation [of self-delusion], because all the historic elements of power see how positions and policies change but interests remain. This principle will be ultimately applied to all the countries that have a relationship with the U.S., whether economic or strategic, because the Arabs are part of a geographic area whose borders are changing, including through the disappearance of the centrally[-ruled] state in favor of states [based on] sect or nationality.

“One simple event in recent days is the Iranian Air Force’s incursion into Iraq to attack ISIS positions, which the U.S. confirmed but Iran denied. At the same time, the U.S. also ignores the incursion of [Iranian] ground troops under the command of [IRGC Qods Forces commander] Qassem Soleymani into Iraq, [which has been taking place] ever since the U.S. first started managing [Iraq’s] affairs… [In fact,] U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stated that any Iranian military attack on ISIS was positive. This exposes the significant coordination between the two countries, and belies the statements of U.S. military circles denying any cooperation or coordination [with Iran] in the war on ISIS…

“In the era of [former Iraqi prime minister Nouri] Al-Maliki, Iraq become nothing but an arena for assuring the interests of two players: Iran and the U.S. This came about as part of an agreement that began with [head of the occupational authority of Iraq after the 2003 invasion Paul] Bremer, and no Iraqi government will put an end to it, unless the Iraqis [dare to] oppose their homeland’s dependence on another country – something that is difficult and complicated to do.

“Ultimately, even if the talk about the American-Iranian hostility is true, everything points towards new contracts between the two which are likely to turn into alliance. We could possibly see catastrophic days if the U.S. forces the Gulf states to reconcile with Iran, which will end in a way that will not serve our interests. This is an outcome that should not surprise us, if the reality of [U.S.-Gulf] friendship evolves into [U.S.] dictates [to the Gulf states].”

 

Endnotes:

[1] Al-Riyadh  (Saudi Arabia), December 7, 2014.

[2] Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, circa 600 BCE.

Categories: Coalition, International Community, Iran scam, Iraq, Kerry, Obama, P5+1, Saudi Arabia, Syria
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: 4 Comments

The new Ottoman emperor

December 3, 2014

The new Ottoman emperor, Israel Hayom, Clifford D. May, December 3, 2014

[T]here is mounting evidence that weapons and fighters are crossing from Turkey into Syria, where they are delivered to Islamic State fighters. Turkish officials are turning a blind eye, or maybe even facilitating the traffic. Stolen oil is moving in the other direction, sold to raise cash for Islamic State. Inside Turkey, as well, Schanzer and Tahiroglu write, Islamic State has “established cells for recruiting militants and other logistical operations.” Last weekend, Turkey’s main Kurdish party accused the Erdogan government of allowing Islamic State fighters to attack the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani from within Turkey.

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

Turkey should have been part of the solution. Instead it has become part of the problem. The problem, of course, is the spread of jihadism throughout the Middle East, North Africa and beyond.

Turkish policies have been aiding and abetting the Nusra Front, an al-Qaida affiliate; the Islamic State group, which has turned large swaths of Syria and Iraq into killing fields; the Islamic Republic of Iran, still ranked by the U.S. government as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and well on its way to becoming nuclear-armed; and the Muslim Brotherhood, including Hamas, the group’s Palestinian branch.

Troubling, too, is the rhetoric we’ve been hearing from Turkish leaders. Turkish Science, Industry and Technology Minister Fikri Isık claimed last week that it was Muslim scientists who first discovered that the earth is round. Two weeks earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted that Muslim sailors reached the Americas 300 years before Columbus — only to find that well-established Muslims in Cuba had built a beautiful mosque.

Such myth-making might be dismissed as nothing more than attempts to play to Islamic pride. Less easy to excuse is Erdogan’s increasing xenophobia. “Foreigners,” he recently observed, “love oil, gold, diamonds, and the cheap labor force of the Islamic world. They like the conflicts, fights and quarrels of the Middle East.” He added that Westerners “look like friends, but they want us dead, they like seeing our children die. How long will we stand that fact?”

If Turkey were just another tin-pot dictatorship, none of this would much matter. But Turkey is a Muslim-majority (98 percent) republic with a dynamic economy (not dependent on the extraction of petroleum), a member of NATO (making it, officially, an American ally), and a candidate for membership in the European Union (though that possibility now appears remote).

Just three years ago, U.S. President Barack Obama listed Erdogan as one of five world leaders with whom he had especially close personal ties. He regarded the Turkish leader as a moderate, his interpreter of — and bridge to — the tumultuous and confusing Islamic world.

Today, as detailed in a new report by Jonathan Schanzer and Merve Tahiroglu, my colleagues at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Erdogan is refusing to allow the American-led coalition formed in August to launch strikes against Islamic State from Turkish soil.

Worse, there is mounting evidence that weapons and fighters are crossing from Turkey into Syria, where they are delivered to Islamic State fighters. Turkish officials are turning a blind eye, or maybe even facilitating the traffic. Stolen oil is moving in the other direction, sold to raise cash for Islamic State. Inside Turkey, as well, Schanzer and Tahiroglu write, Islamic State has “established cells for recruiting militants and other logistical operations.” Last weekend, Turkey’s main Kurdish party accused the Erdogan government of allowing Islamic State fighters to attack the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani from within Turkey.

The FDD report cites numerous sources alleging that Turkey also has given assistance to the Nusra Front. To be fair: The Turkish government, like the Obama administration, seeks the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, satrap of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A Turkish official is quoted as saying that Nusra fighters are essential to that effort, adding: “After Assad is gone, we know how to deal with these extremist groups.”

Do they? Hamas is an extremist group and one of its top leaders, Saleh al-Arouri, has been permitted to set up his headquarters in Turkey. In August, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said it had thwarted a Hamas-led plot to topple Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — and that Arouri was behind it. Arouri also claimed responsibility — in the presence of Turkey’s deputy prime minister — for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli boys in the West Bank early last summer, an act of terrorism that led to the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

There’s more: credible allegations that Turkey has helped Iran’s rulers evade sanctions; the fact that Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other country; Erdogan’s comparison of Israelis to Nazis (guess which he regards as more “barbaric”); and his pledge to “wipe out Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says. They will see the Turkish republic’s strength.”

To understand what Turkey has become, it helps to know a little about what Turkey used to be. Istanbul was once Constantinople, a Christian capital of the ancient world. In 1453, it fell to the fierce armies of the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic caliphate. Islam’s political and religious leaders soon established the Sublime Porte, the central government of their growing imperial realm.

Almost 500 years later, in the aftermath of World War I, the empire collapsed and the caliphate was dissolved. Modern Turkey arose from the ashes thanks to the leadership of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, a visionary general who believed that progress and prosperity could be achieved only by separating mosque and state. His goal was to make Turkey a nation, one as modern and powerful as any in Europe.

A century later, the world looks rather different. There are good reasons to believe Europe is in decline and America in retreat (these are disparate phenomena). While it may be delusional to believe that Columbus encountered Muslims in the Caribbean, it is not crazy to believe that, over the decades ahead, fierce Muslim warriors will profoundly alter the world order once more.

Viewed in this light, Erdogan looks like a neo-Ottoman, one who dreams of commanding Muslims — and those who have submitted to them — in many lands. If that’s accurate, the rift between Turkey and the West can only widen.

Categories: Caliphate, Coalition, Hamas, Iraq, Islam, Middle East, Obama, Turkey
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

US-led warplanes cut through to ISIS targets in Syria & Iraq over Israel

December 2, 2014

US-led warplanes cut through to ISIS targets in Syria & Iraq over Israel, DEBKAfile, December 2, 2014

Flights over Israel

All US and European coalition strike and surveillance flights against ISIS forces in Syria and Iraq under Operation Inherent Resolve have been reaching their targets through the skies of Israel and Jordan, US, European and civilian monitors of global air force movements report. The bodies engaged in minute-by-minute observations of the movements of military strike and refueling craft across the world have released detailed images mapping those routes. They reveal that US and European warplanes are refueling at two points over the Mediterranean Sea before entering Israeli airspace.

They are using two corridors (see attached map) which run over central and northern Israel.

In the first, US planes reach high altitudes over an area just north of Tel Aviv and head east to pass over Jordan to reach Iraq. They are focusing of late on striking ISIS-Al Qaeda-occupied sites in the Anbar Province of western Iraq and the Euphrates basin.

The Islamists have taken to hiding newly established bases in the dense river bank vegetation, from where they are almost impossible to detect by military and spy satellites.

The second US air corridor runs over Haifa Bay, then east over the Jezreel Valley and thence to Hama at the southern tip of the Golan, where the Israeli, Jordanian and Syrian borders converge. The next lap takes the assault fleet into eastern Syria to strike ISIS forces at Abu Kemal and Deir A-Zor and other locations on Syria’s eastern border with Iraq.

The US air force turned to the Israeli route to Syria after Jordan’s King Abdullah declined to provide access over his realm to coalition warplanes bent on striking jihadist targets in Syria. He only permitted them to fly over his kingdom to Iraq, with permission from Baghdad.

Neither Washington, Jerusalem nor Amman are willing to confirm or deny that these trajectories are being used for reaching ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq – although several military websites have made such data public with detailed maps.

The US and Israel have opted for reticence out of three considerations:

1. Reluctance to reveal that Israel and Jordan are partners in Operation Inherent Resolve;

2. Equally embarrassing would be the disclosure that the use of their air space was subject to the permission of the Israeli and Jordanian governments;

3. The scale of the operation also needs to be kept under wraps: US air strikes are managed from three commands: US Central Command in Tampa, Florida; its forward command at the US Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar; and NATO Headquarters in Brussels, which coordinates US and European air operations with the Middle East air forces taking part in the mission against ISIS.

DEBKAfile’s military sources note that, notwithstanding the broad scale of the coalition air offensive against ISIS, to which 20 countries are contributing more than 200 aircraft, its achievements are unimpressive to say the least.

Although official communiqués refer to scores of air strikes (55 at the end of last week), less than 10 strikes per day are actually taking place. This is far below the intensity required for re-tilting the military balance against the Islamists.

The only noteworthy gain to come out of this grand offensive is the decision taken by ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdad to draw a line against expanding his territorial conquests in Syria and Iraq in order to save his organization from further losses from US and allied air strikes. He has determined to focus now on stabilizing and shoring up his gains. ISIS has thus shifted from a strategy of expansion to one of defense.

Categories: Coalition, International Community, Islamic State, U.S. airstrikes
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Obama Betrays the Kurds

September 30, 2014

Obama Betrays the Kurds, National Review on line, Robert Zubrin, September 30, 2014

(Please see also this video about Kurdish female fighters. — DM)

The Kurds are fighting bravely, but they need arms, and they need air support.

Kurdish fightersAhmad al-Rubaye/Getty Images)

[S]ome 400,000 Kurds in and around the town of Kobane in northern Syria, on the Turkish border, are being besieged and assaulted by massed legions of Islamic State killers armed with scores of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and heavy artillery. Against these, the Kurdish defenders have only AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. The Kurds have called on the U.S. to send in air strikes to take out the jihadist forces. In response, the administration sent in two fighter jets Saturday, which destroyed two Islamic State tanks and then flew away. The Kurds are begging for arms. The administration has not only refused to send arms, but is exerting pressure both on our NATO allies and on Israel not to send any either. Over 150,000 Kurds have fled their homes to try to escape to Turkey, but they are being blocked at the border by Turkish troops. Meanwhile, Turkey is allowing Islamist reinforcements to enter Syria to join the Islamic State, while Islamist elements of the Free Syrian Army, funded and armed by the United States, have joined forces with the group in the genocidal assault on the Kurdish enclave. [Emphasis added.]

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

In his speech to the United Nations last week, President Obama pledged to the world that the United States would use its might to stop the horrific depredations of the terrorist movement variously known as the Islamic State, ISIS, or, as he calls it, ISIL.

“This group has terrorized all who they come across in Iraq and Syria,” the president proclaimed. “Mothers, sisters, daughters have been subjected to rape as a weapon of war. Innocent children have been gunned down. Bodies have been dumped in mass graves. Religious minorities have been starved to death. In the most horrific crimes imaginable, innocent human beings have been beheaded, with videos of the atrocity distributed to shock the conscience of the world.”

“No God condones this terror. No grievance justifies these actions,” he said. “There can be no reasoning — no negotiation — with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death. . . . We will support Iraqis and Syrians fighting to reclaim their communities. We will use our military might in a campaign of air strikes to roll back ISIL. We will train and equip forces fighting against these terrorists on the ground.”

These are brave words that well and truly denounce evil for what it is. Unfortunately, the president’s actions since then have been anything but consistent with his pledge to stop the terrorism.

As these lines are being written, some 400,000 Kurds in and around the town of Kobane in northern Syria, on the Turkish border, are being besieged and assaulted by massed legions of Islamic State killers armed with scores of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and heavy artillery. Against these, the Kurdish defenders have only AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. The Kurds have called on the U.S. to send in air strikes to take out the jihadist forces. In response, the administration sent in two fighter jets Saturday, which destroyed two Islamic State tanks and then flew away. The Kurds are begging for arms. The administration has not only refused to send arms, but is exerting pressure both on our NATO allies and on Israel not to send any either. Over 150,000 Kurds have fled their homes to try to escape to Turkey, but they are being blocked at the border by Turkish troops. Meanwhile, Turkey is allowing Islamist reinforcements to enter Syria to join the Islamic State, while Islamist elements of the Free Syrian Army, funded and armed by the United States, have joined forces with the group in the genocidal assault on the Kurdish enclave.

According to Kurdish sources, the Turks are massing troops on their own side of the border, with the apparent plan being to sit in place and allow the Kurds to be exterminated, and then move in to take over the region once they are gone. This is the same plan as Josef Stalin used when he allowed the Nazis to wipe out the Polish underground during the Warsaw rising of 1944, and only afterward sent in the Red Army to take control of what was left of the city. If anything, it is even more morally reprehensible, since it could be pointed out in Stalin’s defense that his forces were at least pummeling the enemy elsewhere while the Warsaw fight was under way. In contrast, the Turks are doing nothing of the sort. For an American administration to collude in such a mass atrocity is infamous.

If we are to win the war against the Islamic State, we need ground forces, and the Obama administration has rejected the idea of sending in any of our own. The Kurds, who have demonstrated both their bravery and their willingness to be friends with America, are right there, and already engaged in the fight. If supplied with adequate arms and backed by serious U.S. tactical air support, they could roll up ISIS as rapidly as the similarly reinforced Northern Alliance did the Taliban in the fall of 2001. Done right, this war could be won in months, instead of waged inconclusively for years.

The administration, however, has rejected this alternative, and has instead opted for a Saudi-Qatari plan to allow the Syrian Kurds to be exterminated while training a new Sunni Arab army in Saudi Arabia. Given the Saudi role in the new army’s tutelage and officer selection, the Islamist nature of this force is a foregone conclusion. At best it might provide a more disciplined replacement for the Islamic State as an Islamist Syrian opposition at some point in the distant future (current official administration estimates are at least a year) when it is considered ready for combat. Meanwhile the killing will simply go on, with the United States doing its part to further Islamist recruitment by indulging in endless strategy-free bombing of Sunni villages.

So now, to paraphrase the president, “Mothers, sisters, daughters will be subjected to rape as a weapon of war. Innocent children will be gunned down. Bodies will be dumped in mass graves. Religious minorities will be starved to death. In the most horrific crimes imaginable, innocent human beings will be beheaded, with videos of the atrocity distributed to shock the conscience of the world.”

Surely we can do better.

 

Categories: Female Kurdish fighters, Iraq, Islamic State, Kurdish fighters, Obama, Syria
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

Where Is Obama’s ‘Broad Coalition’?

September 21, 2014

Where Is Obama’s ‘Broad Coalition’? National Review Online, Victor Davis Hanson, September 18, 2014

The OnePresident Obama addresses servicemembers at MacDill Air Force Base. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The so-called Islamic State has left destruction everywhere that it has gained ground. But as in the case of the tribal Scythians, Vandals, Huns, or Mongols of the past, sowing chaos in its wake does not mean that the Islamic State won’t continue to seek new targets for its devastation.

If unchecked, the Islamic State will turn what is left of the nations of the Middle East into a huge Mogadishu-like tribal wasteland, from the Syrian Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. And they will happily call the resulting mess a caliphate.

It is critical for United States to put together some sort of alliance of friendly Middle East governments and European states to stop the Islamic State before it becomes a permanent base for terrorist operations against the U.S. and its allies. Unfortunately, it appears unlikely that the U.S. will line up a muscular alliance — at least until the Islamic State reaches the gates of Baghdad or plows on through to Saudi Arabia and forces millions of Arabs either to fight or submit.

Why the reluctance for allies to join the U.S.?

Most in the Middle East and Europe do not believe the Obama administration knows much about the Islamic State, much less what to do about it. The president has dismissed it in the past as a jayvee team that could be managed, contradicting the more dire assessments of his own secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

When Obama finally promised to destroy the Islamic State, Secretary of State John Kerry almost immediately backtracked that idea of a full-blown war. Current CIA director John Brennan once dismissed as absurd any idea of Islamic terrorists seeking a modern caliphate. It may be absurd, but it is now also all too real.

Such confusion sadly is not new. The president hinges our hopes on the ground on the Free Syrian Army — which he chose not to help when it once may have been viable. And not long ago he dismissed it as an inexperienced group of doctors and farmers whose utility was mostly a “fantasy.”

No ally is quite sure of what Obama wants to do about Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom he once threatened to bomb for using chemical weapons before backing off.

Potential allies also feel that the Obama administration will get them involved in an operation only to either lose interest or leave them hanging. When Obama entered office in 2009, Iraq was mostly quiet. Both the president and Vice President Joe Biden soon announced it was secure and stable. Then they simply pulled out all U.S. troops, bragged during their re-election campaign that they had ended the war, and let our Iraqi and Kurdish allies fend for themselves against suddenly emboldened Islamic terrorists.

In Libya, the administration followed the British and French lead in bombing the Moammar Gadhafi regime out of power — but then failed to help dissidents fight opportunistic Islamists. The result was the Benghazi disaster, a caricature of a strategy dubbed “leading from behind,” and an Afghanistan-like failed state facing Europe across the Mediterranean.

Now, the president claims authorization to bomb the Islamic State based on a 13-year-old joint resolution — a Bush administration-sponsored effort that Obama himself had often criticized. If the president cannot make a new case to Congress and the American people for bombing the Islamic State, then allies will assume that he cannot build an effective coalition either.

Finally, potential allies doubt that the United States wants to be engaged abroad. They are watching China flex its muscles in the South China Sea. They have not yet seen a viable strategy to stop the serial aggression of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Iran seems to consider U.S. deadlines to stop nuclear enrichment in the same manner that Assad scoffed at administration red lines. With Egypt, the administration seemed confused about whether to support the tottering Hosni Mubarak government, the radical Muslim Brotherhood, or the junta of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi — only at times to oppose all three.

Obama himself seems disengaged, if not bored, with foreign affairs. After publicly deploring the beheading of American journalist James Foley, Obama hit the golf course. When the media reported the disconnect, he scoffed that it was just bad “optics.”

There is a legitimate debate about the degree to which the United States should conduct a preemptive war to stop the Islamic State before it gobbles up any more nations. But so far the president has not entered that debate, much less won it.

No wonder, then, that potential allies do not quite know what the U.S. is doing, how long America will fight, and what will happen to U.S. allies when we likely get tired, quit, and leave.

For now, most allies are sitting tight and waiting for preemptive, unilateral U.S. action. If we begin defeating the Islamic State, they may eventually join in on the kill; if not, they won’t.

That is a terrible way to wage coalition warfare, but we are reaping what we have sown.

Categories: Islam, Islamic State
Tags: , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Coalition of the Unwilling

September 13, 2014

Coalition of the Unwilling, Steyn on line, Mark Steyn, September 12, 2014

946

I was overseas when Obama gave his momentous Isis address, but figured I could pretty much guess how things would go. Despite being the greatest orator of the last thousand years, he’s a complete bust at selling anything but himself, as comprehensively demonstrated in his first couple of years: see his rhetorical efforts on behalf of ObamaCare, or Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley, or Chicago’s Olympics bid. When it comes to war, he suffers from an additional burden: before he can persuade anybody else, he first has to persuade himself. And he can’t do it. So he gave the usual listless performance of a surly actor who resents the part he’s been given. It’s not just the accumulation of equivocations and qualifications – the “Islamic State” is not Islamic, our war with them is not a war, there’ll be no boots on the ground except the exotic footwear of a vast unspecified coalition – but something more basic: What he mainly communicates is that he doesn’t mean it.

That’s what the jihadist militias now in control of Tripoli understood about his “leading from behind”. That’s what Putin grasped about Obama’s “red line” in Syria. And that’s what any Isis member who took time out of his beheading schedule to watch the President on CNN International will have taken away from this week’s speech.

As for the “coalition”, they seem to intuit that, with a leader leading from this far behind, you want to stand even further back. From the mellifluously named Jacaranda FM:

Turkey will refuse to allow a US-led coalition to attack jihadists in neighbouring Iraq and Syria from its air bases, nor will it take part in combat operations against militants, a government official told AFP Thursday.

So much for the only Nato member to border Isis. What of the other Atlantic allies?

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told journalists on Friday that Germany will not take part in US-led air strikes against Islamic extremists Isis in Syria.

The United Kingdom’s position is more, ah, nuanced. First, the Foreign Secretary:

Asked about plans for an open-ended bombing campaign, Mr Hammond said: ‘Let me be clear – Britain will not be taking part in any air strikes in Syria. We have already had that discussion in our parliament last year and we won’t be revisiting that position.’

On the other hand, the Queen’s first minister:

Hours after Mr Hammond’s appearance in Germany, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman insisted Mr Cameron was ‘not ruling anything out’.

What about American allies closer to the action?

There is a disinclination to believe his promises, said Mustafa Alani of the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

“We have reached a low point of trust in this administration,” he said. “We think in a time of crisis Mr. Obama will walk away from everyone if it means saving his own skin.”

Different countries are suspicious of the United States for different reasons, but all feel betrayed in some way by recent U.S. policies, said Salman Shaikh of the Brookings Doha Institute in Qatar.

They, too, take “the leader of the free world” at face value: If he can’t sell it to himself, why should they buy it? The good news is that there is one nation state interested in signing on in a big way:

US Opposes Iran Role in Coalition Against Islamic State

One sympathizes with Obama at having to pretend to be interested in tedious briefings about which set of unlovely ingrate natives we should back against the other. He was elected to be the post-war president – Clement Attlee to Bush’s Winston Churchill, an analogy that’s almost perfect except for the minor detail that in this case the enemy did not acceot that the war was over. Still, it takes two to tango, and Obama’s principal dance move is to stand at the side of the floor looking cool. The Obama Doctrine – “Don’t do stupid sh*t” – has been rendered in non-PG version as “Don’t do stupid stuff”. But it should be more pithily streamlined yet: Don’t do. The Obama “Doctrine” attempts to dignify inertia as strategy. As Noemie Emery writes:

It implies in effect that wisdom is measured in negative energy, that by declining to act one can stay out of trouble, that passivity is the key to a guilt-free existence and a serene and an untroubled world.

Never use force, don’t threaten force, and no one will blame you for anything. Pull out of wars and your foes will stop fighting. Don’t send men to war and your hands will be clean.

And so the President assures us that his determination to “destroy” Isis won’t be anything like Iraq and Afghanistan, but more on the lines of Yemen and Somalia – that’s to say, one more failed state we’ll drone now and again. Can you really treat one of the world’s deepest pools of oil as just another piffling fringe-of-the-map basket-case? Don’t worry about it. For the modern progressive, the entire planet is fringe-of-the-map. Real politics is about free contraceptives for thirtysomething college students, and transgender bathrooms for grade-schoolers. “Foreign policy” is something old bitter white men do.

And so it was that Barack Obama observed the anniversary of 9/11 by visiting something called Ka-BOOM!, a non-profit that helps build playgrounds for children. Neither the President nor the First Lady nor anyone else in the 40-car motorcade appears to have thought it odd that, on the day the Twin Towers went Ka-BOOM!, America’s Commander-in-Chief should behelping put children’s toys in backpacks marked Ka-BOOM! From Kabul to Madrid, Bali to London, a lot of backpacks have gone Ka-BOOM! over the past 13 years, but evidently the thought did not discombobulate those who manage what the President calls his “optics”. And so a day in which Islamic imperialists killed thousands of Americans by flying planes into skyscrapers has somehow devolved into a day for raising awareness of the need for better play facilities for children. Did he also visit Habitat for Humanity and help hang a new window treatment? Did he plant a tree?

In the land of micro-aggressions, macro-aggressions are so last century.

(Here’s the micro-aggression video — DM)

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Newer Entries »