But Turkey and Israel take the prize for countries playing on both sides. Turkey planned and staged its shootdown of a Russian warplane to disrupt development of a genuine coalition against ISIS, preferring instead to press ahead with its war against the Kurds and Assad. The Turks have been allowing militants to cross their border from Syria with relatively little impediment, a point raised by Obama in recent discussions. More to the point, they have been exchanging weapons and cash for oil, which ISIS is pumping out of the fields that it has occupied in Syria and Iraq. Turkish President Erdogan’s son Bilal is behind the syndicate that exports and sells the oil, transactions that might well amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. An attempt to investigate Bilal in 2013 was derailed when his father intervened to fire all the prosecutors and policemen involved. Turkey will not be joining the fray against ISIS at any time soon.
And then there is Israel, which has made clear that it prefers terrorists to Assad.
NATO should invade ISIS-held territory
The only way to deny ISIS control of any territory is an invasion and occupation by a coalition of outside powers.
.. Unfortunately, these gains did not last, because the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad did not reach political accommodation with the Sunnis of the Awakening movement. Many Iraqi Sunni Arabs, fearing persecution from a sectarian Iraqi government, accepted ISIS as the less bad alternative.
.. To prevent something similar from happening, NATO should aim to create semiautonomous regions controlled by Sunni tribal leaders under restored Syrian and Iraqi sovereignty, using Iraqi Kurdistan as a model.
.. Though difficult, this plan could succeed because, in addition to weakening ISIS, all parties get something they want.
- Vienna conference participants would increase the chances of a diplomatic solution to the Syrian civil war, since ISIS is the largest potential spoiler.
- The EU, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan would all get relief from the flood of refugees, as civilians would no longer need to flee ISIS, and some could even return home to stabilized areas of Iraq and Syria.
- Russia would retain its military bases and influence in Syria.
- Iran would ensure the survival of the Syrian and Iraqi governments.
- The Kurds would maintain their autonomy, perhaps with slightly expanded territorial control.
- Iraqi Sunni Arabs would get some autonomy from the central government in Baghdad.
- The Shia-dominated Iraqi government would regain sovereignty over all of Iraq.
- Finally, the United States and France would ensure a multilateral, legally recognized campaign to eliminate ISIS, rather than the half measures both have pursued thus far.
#You Ain’t No American, Bro
Trump, by alienating the Muslim world with his call for a ban on Muslims entering America, is acting as the Islamic State’s secret agent. ISIS wants every Muslim in America (and Europe) to feel alienated. If that happens, ISIS won’t need to recruit anyone. People will will just act on their own. ISIS and Islamic extremism are Muslim problems that can only be fixed by Muslims. Lumping all Muslims together as our enemies will only make that challenge harder.
.. What Obama also has right is that old saying: “If you’re in a poker game and you don’t know who the sucker is, it’s probably you.” That’s the game we’re in in Iraq and Syria. All our allies for a coalition to take down ISIS want what we want, but as their second choice.
Kurds are not going to die to liberate Mosul from ISIS in order to hand it over to a Shiite-led government in Baghdad; they’ll want to keep it. The Turks primarily want to block the Kurds. The Iranians want ISIS crushed, but worry that if moderate Sunnis take over its territory they could one day threaten Iran’s allies in Iraq and Syria. The Saudi government would like ISIS to disappear, but its priority right now is crushing Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen. And with 1,000 Saudi youth having joined ISIS as fighters — and with Saudi Arabia leading the world in pro-ISIS tweets, according to a recent Brookings study — the Saudi government is wary about leading the anti-ISIS fight. The Russians pretend to fight ISIS, but they are really in Syria to protect Bashar al-Assad and defeat his moderate foes.
.. Sufficient U.S. ground forces could easily crush ISIS, but the morning after — when we try to put in place a decent local government to replace our troops — we’d face those mixed motives of all of our coalition partners. So what to do?
.. stress that while we know that the violent jihadists are a minority among Muslims, the notion that they’re a totally separate and distinct group is not true. ISIS ideology comes directly out of the most puritanical, anti-pluralistic Salafist school of Islam, which promotes a lot of hostility toward “the other” — Shiites, Jews, Hindus, Christians. Clearly, some people are taking permission and inspiration from this puritanical Islam to murder and sow mayhem. I can’t reform it, but a movement of Muslims must, because it is isolating their whole community
.. I agree that Trump will not be our next President. The problem is he is making the rest of the GOP field look moderate by comparison when in fact they probably agree with 95 percent or more of his agenda. While Trump is rightly being pilloried for his comments another major GOP candidate (Cruz) states he will bomb Iraq and Syria back to the Stone Age. He states he doesn’t know if sand can glow in the dark but we will find out. It appears he is referencing nuclear weapons. Why hasn’t the mainstream media called him out on this. Frankly his statement is more chilling than anything Trump has advocated. In fact, his surge in the polls is the reason Trump made his moronic statement. That’s a problem and no one seems to care. Oh well?
The War on ISIS: What’s the Endgame?
The United States hadn’t even entered the war yet, but it was already focused on winning the peace. The endgame was not just the defeat of the Axis powers, but also the creation of a stable global order, in which World War II would be the last world war.
.. These hawks may be neglecting the endgame because they fear that long-term thinking will deter the United States from escalating the campaign against ISIS. They are eager to obliterate the Islamic State, and they don’t want to be distracted by tough questions about, say, how Syria can be reconstructed from the ruins of war. Look too hard before we leap, and we might decide not to jump at all.
.. Even the best outcome in the Middle East won’t feel like victory. We’re looking at months or years of battling ISIS, and then years or decades of stabilizing Syria and Iraq.