Our military used to think they were on football fields, on the ninth down… Now it's surgeons: battlefields are their operating rooms. They excise the cancer, i.e. the enemy.
But the world doesn't work like an operating room or a football field. You can't just remove some "cancer" without removing the cancer-causing agent. That brings us to the not-a-war against Islamic State.
There is a reason Islamic State has many supporters among Sunni tribes in northern Iraq. The US appeared to promise Sunni tribesmen access to government jobs and money in the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq, then arranged for a sectarian Shiite government to take over. The latter not only cut them off; it has discriminated against them, against all Sunnis (the dominant sect until the end of Saddam) and finds excuses to kill a good many, while arming their own Shiite extremists, organized in militias, who carried out organized killings of Sunnis during the civil war before the surge.
IS speaks for that disenfranchisement and humiliation. It offers pride and power, although it's mode of governing is even more brutal and repressive than Saddam ever dared. Much may be forgiven for a return of pride and power. Some may like the piousity, as well. IS is an even bloodier version of the Inquisition, the witch hangings in Salem, the massacres of Protestants by Catholics and vice-versa from the Reformation all the way up to Northern Ireland. But it's similar.
"Taking out" Islamic State is an absurd plan. Unless Sunnis in both Iraq and Syria are offered a significant part of the pie, of power, of respect, IS, or another iteration, will continue to have a popular appeal.
What is needed is extreme political reform in both Syria and Iraq.
But, in Syria, the government, Alawite/Shiite dominated, is more powerful, bloody and repressive than any reformist or secular rebellion. Only Sunni militants have been able to successfully challenge the Assad regime: IS controls about a third of Syria--and a third of Iraq.
IS dared the US to attack them, and like idiots, we took the dare. What they wanted most of all was to have the US as their enemy, so they could recruit fighters from as far away as Chicago, London, Paris, LA, as well as Karachi and Jeddah. And money, of course.
Cutting off IS's cash--one of Obama's strategies--makes much more sense. An arms embargo of the whole region (of our regional friends, too) makes more sense than shipping boatloads of new weapons. How do you think IS arms itself? Capture, or purchase. Both are easier if the region is awash in arms.
What should the US do once an arms embargo is in place? Ensure it's in force, as much as is possible without drastically increasing our patrols of the skies and seas of the region.
The problem of Sunni extremists will not go away if we "surgically remove" IS emplacements, or even whole units. It will only go away, in one form or another, when the need for a radical extremist movement is superseded by real reforms and Sunni access to power and resources.
Finally, by bombing the s**t out of them, we're bound to miss, or to take out the wrong target enough of the time that we increase the ranks of the radical Islamists, who, notice, invited the attacks in the first place.
You can't kill an idea with bombs, nor a movement, no matter how noxious it may be.
Chelsea Manning suggested we should wall IS within its current conquests, and let it fail of its own weight. She's right.
IS economics' reminds me of Attila the Hun, whose power and wealth came from loot, ransoms and selling slaves. His warriors could keep all they could carry, except for the captives, who were all Attila's: IS's warriors are paid high salaries paid for by their loot and black-market oil. The Hun's career was cut short (assassin or stroke, either was possible), but his predecessor, the Roman Empire of the period demonstrated what happens to a warrior economy when it loses old conquests, instead of winning new ones: loot, ransom, slaves, new lands dried up, no longer powering the empire; it shrank rapidly. It disappeared in the West, in 476. (See Attila As Told to His Scribes, a fictional autobiography)
That same dynamic could be speeded up to a year or two, if IS were contained, quarantined by the world. Some civilians might starve, but that would be better than dying from bombs. And IS's failure to bring the good life would demonstrate that it's vision was flawed, even to the young, disaffected Muslim men who make up its ranks, certainly to the civilians upon which it feeds.
In any case, the US and Obama should get over the idea that the US must control events in the Middle East. I'd let the people of the region kill each other until they settle down and see reason; eventually they will. Until they do, the whole region should be left alone.
In the meantime, we have work to do: conversion of our energy sources from outmoded oil, coal and gas to the new, exciting "alternative" energies, that will cost less, require less capital and will be renewable and non-polluting: wind, solar, tidal, geo-thermal, compost gas and algae for fuel.
We have to direct all our energy to reducing global warming as much as we can: IS is an unnecessary and dangerous distraction.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Friday, September 19, 2014
Commies, Russians, Nazis and Ukraine
Commies Russians Nazis and Ukraine
When I was a kid, the MSM tried to teach us to fear the Commies--and people sympathetic to them, like Pete Seeger (a local hero). The Commies were Russians, of course, and even though they'd fought courageously on the same side in World War II, and had more fatalities than any other combatant, they quickly became the enemy, because Stalin had taken over half of Europe and was pushing outward in the East as well, in Korea, and Vietnam.
I remember being told by an anti-Communist that the Communists were going to take over, the only question was when. That was before Khrushchev banged his shoe on the UN table, long before Brezhnev.
JFK probably owed his election to his manufactured missile crisis (the Reds had more missiles, he claimed).
History has not been kind to the anti-Communist scares. The USSR was never really a match for the US, except for its massive tank forces ready to drive west into Europe. The talk of the missile gap, and of the USSR gaining advantage turned out to be false: even up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, our "intelligence" services were way over-estimating Soviet capabilities.
Why did they do that so consistently? Defense is a huge business, earning high (and often easy, cost-plus) profits. Pretending that the Soviets were 7 feet tall was good business.
When the USSR collapsed, US intel did a somersault. Russia was suddenly a basket case and could be ignored. American military pushed NATO expansion into ex-Soviet states, even though the new Russia was supposed to be our friend and we'd promised not to expand NATO to ex-Soviet states: first exceptions were the Baltic states.
What American military policy makers neglected to remember, however, was the Russian view of the world. Unlike the US, Russia never had well-defined, easily defended boundaries. The Muscovite state emerged to defend Russians from almost continuous invasions (on average about one every other year for 300 years). That's why the Tsarist political idea held that all power had to be owned by the Tsar: separation of powers was unthinkable. That's also, why Russia expanded in all directions; there were no boundaries until they reached the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific: Russians had a felt need to defend themselves against all comers. And still do.
Russians have had an historical experience that is totally foreign to Americans. At the beginning of WWII, they fought the Winter War against Finland. They fought to a settlement in which Finland has been neutral ever since.
They and others have suggested that Finland be a model for Ukraine. During WWII, Ukrainian nationalists fought for the Nazis, and welcomed their invasion; they were even more enthused about killing off Jews and Poles than the invaders.
What does Putin and the Russians see today: right-wing (neo-Nazi) Ukrainians spearheading the overthrow of the elected government, gaining power, initially, over defense and security in the new government, and even ramming through legislation to outlaw the Russian language. The new executive quickly rescinded the latter, when it became clear it was politically disastrous.
Ukrainian nationalists promoted EU and NATO membership, and their enthusiasm for both was only dampened when Americans and Europeans couldn't promise either. But think of the Russian reaction: NATO was organized to defend Europe against the USSR and was a creature of the US. Ukrainian nationalists want to establish both on the main Russian border, over lands where most invasions have come for more than 1000 years.
The east of Ukraine is largely Russian speaking: its people supported the overthrown President, Yanukovich, and were justifiably paranoid of the anti-Russian coup majority. They may have been encouraged to rebel by Putin's media, then equipped by the Russian military, and further, joined by "volunteers" from the Russian Army. The new Ukrainian revolutionary government did not treat the Russian rebels as dissidents but as traitors and labeled them Fascists and terrorists.
That was bad enough, but under Poroshenko, the new Ukrainian President, the rebels and the cities they occupied were shelled and bombed. We were outraged when Assad did something similar, but Europe and the US only mildly objected when the Ukraine bombed its own people. That's when Putin, apparently, sent in Russian soldiers to turn the tide.
But notice: with the exception of the special case of Crimea (host to the Russian Black Sea Navy, ethnically heavily Russian), Putin has not moved to take over Eastern Ukraine, only to stop Poroshenko's brutal "anti-terrorist" campaign against ethnic Russians. Since the ceasefire, Putin has pushed for a weak federal state for Ukraine, which would create a neutral country, much like Finland.
The US should not be promoting NATO expansion to Russian borders, and rather than entering a new Cold War, we should collaborate with Russia, on both ISIS and Ukraine, and should welcome Russian aid in settling our differences with Iran, if not with Assad in Syria. Putin is not really setting out to recreate the USSR; he's attempting to protect Russia the way Russians always have, unless we force his hand. Remember: Russia still has enough nukes to devastate the world.
Do we really want to have a nuclear confrontation even more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962? We came close to blowing up the world then: it still could happen.
When I was a kid, the MSM tried to teach us to fear the Commies--and people sympathetic to them, like Pete Seeger (a local hero). The Commies were Russians, of course, and even though they'd fought courageously on the same side in World War II, and had more fatalities than any other combatant, they quickly became the enemy, because Stalin had taken over half of Europe and was pushing outward in the East as well, in Korea, and Vietnam.
I remember being told by an anti-Communist that the Communists were going to take over, the only question was when. That was before Khrushchev banged his shoe on the UN table, long before Brezhnev.
JFK probably owed his election to his manufactured missile crisis (the Reds had more missiles, he claimed).
History has not been kind to the anti-Communist scares. The USSR was never really a match for the US, except for its massive tank forces ready to drive west into Europe. The talk of the missile gap, and of the USSR gaining advantage turned out to be false: even up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, our "intelligence" services were way over-estimating Soviet capabilities.
Why did they do that so consistently? Defense is a huge business, earning high (and often easy, cost-plus) profits. Pretending that the Soviets were 7 feet tall was good business.
When the USSR collapsed, US intel did a somersault. Russia was suddenly a basket case and could be ignored. American military pushed NATO expansion into ex-Soviet states, even though the new Russia was supposed to be our friend and we'd promised not to expand NATO to ex-Soviet states: first exceptions were the Baltic states.
What American military policy makers neglected to remember, however, was the Russian view of the world. Unlike the US, Russia never had well-defined, easily defended boundaries. The Muscovite state emerged to defend Russians from almost continuous invasions (on average about one every other year for 300 years). That's why the Tsarist political idea held that all power had to be owned by the Tsar: separation of powers was unthinkable. That's also, why Russia expanded in all directions; there were no boundaries until they reached the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific: Russians had a felt need to defend themselves against all comers. And still do.
Russians have had an historical experience that is totally foreign to Americans. At the beginning of WWII, they fought the Winter War against Finland. They fought to a settlement in which Finland has been neutral ever since.
They and others have suggested that Finland be a model for Ukraine. During WWII, Ukrainian nationalists fought for the Nazis, and welcomed their invasion; they were even more enthused about killing off Jews and Poles than the invaders.
What does Putin and the Russians see today: right-wing (neo-Nazi) Ukrainians spearheading the overthrow of the elected government, gaining power, initially, over defense and security in the new government, and even ramming through legislation to outlaw the Russian language. The new executive quickly rescinded the latter, when it became clear it was politically disastrous.
Ukrainian nationalists promoted EU and NATO membership, and their enthusiasm for both was only dampened when Americans and Europeans couldn't promise either. But think of the Russian reaction: NATO was organized to defend Europe against the USSR and was a creature of the US. Ukrainian nationalists want to establish both on the main Russian border, over lands where most invasions have come for more than 1000 years.
The east of Ukraine is largely Russian speaking: its people supported the overthrown President, Yanukovich, and were justifiably paranoid of the anti-Russian coup majority. They may have been encouraged to rebel by Putin's media, then equipped by the Russian military, and further, joined by "volunteers" from the Russian Army. The new Ukrainian revolutionary government did not treat the Russian rebels as dissidents but as traitors and labeled them Fascists and terrorists.
That was bad enough, but under Poroshenko, the new Ukrainian President, the rebels and the cities they occupied were shelled and bombed. We were outraged when Assad did something similar, but Europe and the US only mildly objected when the Ukraine bombed its own people. That's when Putin, apparently, sent in Russian soldiers to turn the tide.
But notice: with the exception of the special case of Crimea (host to the Russian Black Sea Navy, ethnically heavily Russian), Putin has not moved to take over Eastern Ukraine, only to stop Poroshenko's brutal "anti-terrorist" campaign against ethnic Russians. Since the ceasefire, Putin has pushed for a weak federal state for Ukraine, which would create a neutral country, much like Finland.
The US should not be promoting NATO expansion to Russian borders, and rather than entering a new Cold War, we should collaborate with Russia, on both ISIS and Ukraine, and should welcome Russian aid in settling our differences with Iran, if not with Assad in Syria. Putin is not really setting out to recreate the USSR; he's attempting to protect Russia the way Russians always have, unless we force his hand. Remember: Russia still has enough nukes to devastate the world.
Do we really want to have a nuclear confrontation even more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962? We came close to blowing up the world then: it still could happen.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Reluctant Leader, Reluctant Followers
I mean members of Obama's new coalition, supposedly not followers. But the US has to be the leader, Obama declares. Apparently, Obama's team, including Secretary Kerry, didn't get such firm commitments that regional nations could be called allies. Perhaps 'followers' is the more appropriate term: according to an NYT article (9/12), the only enthusiastic supporters of Obama's plan are the 'moderate' Syrian rebel groups, who hope to gain a windfall of arms. Even they complain, however, that it's too little and too late; IS buys their weapons and pays themselves handsome salaries, while the moderates nearly starve. IS extorts its new subjects, taxes them, loots the region and sells Iraqi oil on the black market: it has money.
The Syrian government would like to sign on against IS, and only asks that the US coordinate with it in its attacks in their country. Of course, the US avoids Assad like the plague: "he lost legitimacy a long time ago," Obama said.
But Egypt, Jordan and even Saudi Arabia appear to be only formally going along, without making any commitments. Iran, as the opponent of The Great Satan, is not invited, (it claims it was and turned the Great Satan down), but is fighting against IS, itself. Iraq's government is still not governing a critical part of the country and its population--the north, west and the Sunnis, respectively. Even if the new PM proves more ecumenical, able to unify the country, that could take years: the government the US put in place did a lot of damage to Iraq's nationhood.
Will Obama's campaign, allied with ghost coalition members, be like the wars in Somalia and Yemen, mentioned by Obama in passing? He didn't mention the Pakistan drone war, which, though larger, is still probably too small in scale to compare with what he's proposing: an assault on IS using our sophisticated air offense against the army of a movement, in both Iraq and Syria. However, many of his actual targets may turn out to be wedding parties or boys playing Cricket. What has been the result of our drone wars in Pakistan and Afghanistan? We've made enemies. We may have decapitated al Qaeda, yet it's still in operation. For every family of civilians, or children, mothers and fathers our drones summarily execute, we create recruits for even more violent and radical "Islamists."
I can guarantee that the IS is not so stupid as to mass its troops and artillery in places the US could target without killing civilians. However, we already claim there are miniscule numbers of civilian deaths and injuries in Somalia and Yemen. That's because when the US attacks, mysteriously, all dead males between the ages of 15 and 50 become 'militants.' Women of fighting age may be counted, too. Wave the wand: civilian deaths gone, except for a niggling asterisk: those little bodies, or the gray haired ones.
Obama may have really done it this time: committed himself to a 'police action' that no one else is any more enthusiastically for than he is: the reluctant leading the reluctant and wary.
The problems with his proposal: it disregards the real facts on the ground. Our opponents in the Syrian civil war, Assad and Iran, are fighting IS; our natural allies, the moderate rebels, are dispirited and outgunned; Iraq is still a mess. Our other expected allies are more concerned with the Palestinian or other more local problems, or are divided, as are the Persian Gulf monarchies: Qatar, for example, has been funding IS; Saudi Arabia is wary of IS and the US. Worst of all, Turkey will not participate for two reasons: fear of Kurdish groups fighting Syria would strengthen the Kurdish rebellion against Turkey. They are also constrained by the 49 Turkish hostages held by IS.
After all the US's invasions, surges, bombing campaigns, drone wars and advisory missions in the region, there may be a growing sense among the supposed beneficiaries, that the US makes things worse, not better. Further, when America leads in the Mideast, that means that regional powers do not. Now, they are like the boy who doesn't want to go to wherever his parents want him to, and he has to be dragged along by his father.
The region's powers will have to solve this puzzle on their own. They may not, but face it: we can't solve it for them. Right now, Obama looks like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.
Consequences for the Middle East of Obama's plan: there will be more inconclusive violence, more recruits for bitter-enders and more destabilization. Consequences for the United States: the President does and will look inconsistent and ineffective, and nothing will get done in the next two years, because Republicans will try to override or repeal Obama's programs, especially if they win a majority in the Senate as well as the House. That's more likely if this campaign is a disaster. Then, only Presidential vetoes will stand in their way.
The only action by the US that might contribute to stopping IS would be to negotiate a regional arms embargo, to dry up the flow of weapons, especially to IS. But who makes money on that?
There! The US Navy has its mission: enforce the embargo on the seas; so does the Air Force; that would at least be some business for our fearsome arms. Maybe the Air Force would even get another reason to bomb people: they're the scum who are smuggling in arms to kill more people.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
The President Decided
The President has decided: given American foreign policy up to now, he couldn't have decided otherwise, because America Leads the Mideast….towards "order."
Oh, it could be worse. If McCain were President, and he always wishes he were, we'd be flying in troops by the thousands and bombing the hell outta the whole Syria-Iraq borderlands.
But order means we're going to bomb the hell outta some of them, and call it a "counter-terrorist" action, not a war. A war would come under the War Powers Act, requiring Congressional approval. Also, Obama wants to be against war, even if he starts one.
Obama asks for some kind of support from Congress; Republicans don't want to stop him, or condemn him; some even may be coming around to support the action. However, one Republican Congressman remarked: they'd applaud if things go well, and say "you should have acted much earlier," if the action fails. Earlier means when they were urging Obama to bomb Syria for its chemical weapons. Most Republicans have wanted every war since WWII, even when there were Democratic Presidents benefiting from wars at the polls.
Wait a minute! Could Obama be doing something similar? ISIL is a horror, but perhaps a convenient horror. Until this crisis, Obama was "embattled" and increasingly unpopular, so much so, that many Democratic candidates welcomed his efforts to raise money for them, but avoided joint appearances.
On the other hand, Obama's proposal embodies the success of ISIL propaganda and strategy. ISIL staged the beheadings of American journalists to accomplish two goals: bolster their image of ruthlessness to recruit western extremists, and goad the US into acting against them, to broaden their anti-western appeal. Baghdadi, after all, speaks of the Califate, meaning world rule, not just swathes of two war-torn nations.
Obama's "decisive action" will rally the troops and neutralize the opposition. Given the tilt towards war in all the "major" media, ISIL is a convenient pretext.
Obama's "decisive action:" means bombing, degrading and destroying ISIL. Sounds like what we did to al Qaeda. Now, the US is leading a regional coalition, to stop ISIL: stopping the flow of money, for example from Saudi Arabia; regaining control of borders, launching incursions from them, and supporting "moderate" militias and the Iraqi army. The US commitment is leadership, air war attack force, training, materiel and Intel.
We started out in Vietnam with less, and we've already been in Iraq two times before. We could be sucked back into the mire of the Middle East, not only in Iraq, but now in Syria, as well.
On the other hand, Obama may get lucky. ISIL is a freak opponent that seems to appeal to the most crazed, even of some American youth, but is hated by the people they've conquered. Hundreds to thousands are slaughtered, many randomly, at first. Then the survivors undergo looting, high taxes and a repressive social order, brutally enforced.
Why does ISIL exist? Because the US and allies were arming Syrian insurgents, and ISIL was adept at getting enough arms to capture more from their competitors in the Syrian civil war, while supposedly fighting to overthrow Assad. They then expanded in eastern Syria, controlling whole provinces, driving out more secular and moderate rebels.
Then, with superior tactics and morale, they took Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and captured the huge amount of weaponry we had bestowed on the dispirited Iraqi army. Since embittered ex-military (from Saddam's disbanded army) joined ISIL in droves, it had the technical skills to turn those sophisticated weapons south, and expand their domain of control dramatically and suddenly. Massacres, mass rapes and even attempted genocide followed. ISIL's leader openly threatened to annihilate the Tacridis; Shiites were given a choice: convert instantly to Sunni Islam, or die an infidel.
Brute force works for a while, and forced conversions are a tradition in the Mideast going back millennia. However, they aren't a way to gain popular support, nor are the massacres and repression.
ISIL is a mile high and an inch deep.
There is no reason why the US has to step in. The groups and nations of the region are going to have to work it out. The sooner there is no Uncle Sam leading, they'd have to learn to cooperate, and would be forced to see their own mutual interests. Or kill each other: yes, all out Shiite-Sunni war would dwarf all the current conflagrations.
But the US has almost always made things worse since Vietnam, whenever it intervenes, in the region, or elsewhere. The current proposal is even more flawed than usual: if we destroy ISIL, Assad's forces can fill the vacuum. If we don't, we'll probably rally Sunnis to ISIL's side. US enemies will win, either way. What then? War to accomplish "regime change" in Syria, and maybe Iraq, again?
No action except an arms embargo of the whole region makes much sense. ISIL is (our friend) Iraq's enemy and (our enemy) Syria's enemy. It gains its appeal from the ill-treatment of Sunni Muslims by both governments. Until people in the region learn to live together, instead of killing each other, ISIL, or its successors, may be a problem no outside power can solve.
Oh, it could be worse. If McCain were President, and he always wishes he were, we'd be flying in troops by the thousands and bombing the hell outta the whole Syria-Iraq borderlands.
But order means we're going to bomb the hell outta some of them, and call it a "counter-terrorist" action, not a war. A war would come under the War Powers Act, requiring Congressional approval. Also, Obama wants to be against war, even if he starts one.
Obama asks for some kind of support from Congress; Republicans don't want to stop him, or condemn him; some even may be coming around to support the action. However, one Republican Congressman remarked: they'd applaud if things go well, and say "you should have acted much earlier," if the action fails. Earlier means when they were urging Obama to bomb Syria for its chemical weapons. Most Republicans have wanted every war since WWII, even when there were Democratic Presidents benefiting from wars at the polls.
Wait a minute! Could Obama be doing something similar? ISIL is a horror, but perhaps a convenient horror. Until this crisis, Obama was "embattled" and increasingly unpopular, so much so, that many Democratic candidates welcomed his efforts to raise money for them, but avoided joint appearances.
On the other hand, Obama's proposal embodies the success of ISIL propaganda and strategy. ISIL staged the beheadings of American journalists to accomplish two goals: bolster their image of ruthlessness to recruit western extremists, and goad the US into acting against them, to broaden their anti-western appeal. Baghdadi, after all, speaks of the Califate, meaning world rule, not just swathes of two war-torn nations.
Obama's "decisive action" will rally the troops and neutralize the opposition. Given the tilt towards war in all the "major" media, ISIL is a convenient pretext.
Obama's "decisive action:" means bombing, degrading and destroying ISIL. Sounds like what we did to al Qaeda. Now, the US is leading a regional coalition, to stop ISIL: stopping the flow of money, for example from Saudi Arabia; regaining control of borders, launching incursions from them, and supporting "moderate" militias and the Iraqi army. The US commitment is leadership, air war attack force, training, materiel and Intel.
We started out in Vietnam with less, and we've already been in Iraq two times before. We could be sucked back into the mire of the Middle East, not only in Iraq, but now in Syria, as well.
On the other hand, Obama may get lucky. ISIL is a freak opponent that seems to appeal to the most crazed, even of some American youth, but is hated by the people they've conquered. Hundreds to thousands are slaughtered, many randomly, at first. Then the survivors undergo looting, high taxes and a repressive social order, brutally enforced.
Why does ISIL exist? Because the US and allies were arming Syrian insurgents, and ISIL was adept at getting enough arms to capture more from their competitors in the Syrian civil war, while supposedly fighting to overthrow Assad. They then expanded in eastern Syria, controlling whole provinces, driving out more secular and moderate rebels.
Then, with superior tactics and morale, they took Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and captured the huge amount of weaponry we had bestowed on the dispirited Iraqi army. Since embittered ex-military (from Saddam's disbanded army) joined ISIL in droves, it had the technical skills to turn those sophisticated weapons south, and expand their domain of control dramatically and suddenly. Massacres, mass rapes and even attempted genocide followed. ISIL's leader openly threatened to annihilate the Tacridis; Shiites were given a choice: convert instantly to Sunni Islam, or die an infidel.
Brute force works for a while, and forced conversions are a tradition in the Mideast going back millennia. However, they aren't a way to gain popular support, nor are the massacres and repression.
ISIL is a mile high and an inch deep.
There is no reason why the US has to step in. The groups and nations of the region are going to have to work it out. The sooner there is no Uncle Sam leading, they'd have to learn to cooperate, and would be forced to see their own mutual interests. Or kill each other: yes, all out Shiite-Sunni war would dwarf all the current conflagrations.
But the US has almost always made things worse since Vietnam, whenever it intervenes, in the region, or elsewhere. The current proposal is even more flawed than usual: if we destroy ISIL, Assad's forces can fill the vacuum. If we don't, we'll probably rally Sunnis to ISIL's side. US enemies will win, either way. What then? War to accomplish "regime change" in Syria, and maybe Iraq, again?
No action except an arms embargo of the whole region makes much sense. ISIL is (our friend) Iraq's enemy and (our enemy) Syria's enemy. It gains its appeal from the ill-treatment of Sunni Muslims by both governments. Until people in the region learn to live together, instead of killing each other, ISIL, or its successors, may be a problem no outside power can solve.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
A Free-market Solution to Mideast Crises
American interventions in the Mideast have been little short of disastrous: starting with the CIA coup in Iran in 1953, which led to the Islamic Revolution and the current Islamic state. Further, Iraq had a relatively stable, if murderous, regime that provided drinking water and predictable electric power, roads, security, jobs. and kept out Islamic extremists. The current regime may be more democratic, but chaos rules and Saddam's amenities, mentioned above, are no longer predictable, or even possible.
The conflicts in Syria and Iraq, where Islamic State momentarily controls swathes of both, are part of a larger Middle Eastern conflict: between Sunni and Shia. While the main Shia state is not Arab, Iraq, with a Shiite majority is Arab, as are Shiite majorities or large minorities in many Arab countries. The conflict is not between Persians and Arabs; it's far broader than that. In Iraq, it's between a once-dominant Sunni minority and a now dominant Shia majority; in Syria a Shiite-allied minority rules and a Sunni majority rebels--militarily dominated by Sunni extremists. Sunni Arabia opposes Shiite Iran. Both have many clients: Hezbollah, the PLO, al Qaeda, IS….
The conflict's closest historical analogue is hardly encouraging: Protestant versus Catholic in Europe's Hundred Years War.
One thing this conflict is Not: central to American interests.
Either will sell us oil; they need the money. Oil is sold at international prices and the US is now producing more of its own than is good for the planet: we need less Arab oil, anyway.
The current success of IS, or ISIS, is due to the colossal blunder of the US in going into Iraq in the first place, then strewing its modern weapons all over it. We assumed, wrongly, that the established government would be able to hold onto them. We made the same mistake in Vietnam, where American arms found their way to the Viet Cong. But IS is not another Nazi Germany, nor the Viet Cong, however much it might want to be--albeit with Muslim symbolism. Germany was an advanced industrial state: the Viet Cong had a government sponsor: North Vietnam. Those governments were well established, and Germany had the know-how to rebuild a defense industry. IS has none of these things. It lucked out when the Iraqi army turned tail, and dropped all the American high tech weaponry we'd given them.
IS may be able to terrorize millions for a short while, but how can it supply its army with modern arms and ammunition? It can't produce them. It can buy some on the Black Market, financed by oil and looting, but that can become prohibitively expensive, especially if the US did something uncharacteristically intelligent like embargo arms sales.
IS is against the interests of almost every established Muslim state, secular or non, Sunni or Shiite. Do Arabs want to live under the IS regime, where executions are daily, taxes are high, and codes of conduct are stifling. Some think they do--until they experience it. IS's power is ephemeral, unless the US gives it credibility by making their movement the equivalent of Nazi Germany, against which a mighty alliance (led by the US), would march into battle--strewing expensive weapons. IS tries to incite intervention with its videoed beheadings; it's their resupply and recruitment strategy.
We'd be intervening on the side of Shiites, when Sunnis are rising against the murderous Syrian Assad regime, and against blatant discrimination by the Iraqi Shiite government we installed. Shiite Iran is stable, has democratic elements, but is hostile to the US. Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf kingdoms are hardly democratic. Egypt, our most important Sunni client, is a brutal, repressive military regime. All these Sunni states are supposedly US friends.
So, why intervene on either side, especially when this conflict has been going on since Mohammed's death in 632 and the ensuing battle for succession?
I have a better solution: don't take sides and don't intervene. Sell arms only to stable states, profit from the regional conflict, but don't try to control it: the US can't, and shouldn't try. Defense industries could make money from it, however, without costing US lives or increased US debts.
The conflicts in Syria and Iraq, where Islamic State momentarily controls swathes of both, are part of a larger Middle Eastern conflict: between Sunni and Shia. While the main Shia state is not Arab, Iraq, with a Shiite majority is Arab, as are Shiite majorities or large minorities in many Arab countries. The conflict is not between Persians and Arabs; it's far broader than that. In Iraq, it's between a once-dominant Sunni minority and a now dominant Shia majority; in Syria a Shiite-allied minority rules and a Sunni majority rebels--militarily dominated by Sunni extremists. Sunni Arabia opposes Shiite Iran. Both have many clients: Hezbollah, the PLO, al Qaeda, IS….
The conflict's closest historical analogue is hardly encouraging: Protestant versus Catholic in Europe's Hundred Years War.
One thing this conflict is Not: central to American interests.
Either will sell us oil; they need the money. Oil is sold at international prices and the US is now producing more of its own than is good for the planet: we need less Arab oil, anyway.
The current success of IS, or ISIS, is due to the colossal blunder of the US in going into Iraq in the first place, then strewing its modern weapons all over it. We assumed, wrongly, that the established government would be able to hold onto them. We made the same mistake in Vietnam, where American arms found their way to the Viet Cong. But IS is not another Nazi Germany, nor the Viet Cong, however much it might want to be--albeit with Muslim symbolism. Germany was an advanced industrial state: the Viet Cong had a government sponsor: North Vietnam. Those governments were well established, and Germany had the know-how to rebuild a defense industry. IS has none of these things. It lucked out when the Iraqi army turned tail, and dropped all the American high tech weaponry we'd given them.
IS may be able to terrorize millions for a short while, but how can it supply its army with modern arms and ammunition? It can't produce them. It can buy some on the Black Market, financed by oil and looting, but that can become prohibitively expensive, especially if the US did something uncharacteristically intelligent like embargo arms sales.
IS is against the interests of almost every established Muslim state, secular or non, Sunni or Shiite. Do Arabs want to live under the IS regime, where executions are daily, taxes are high, and codes of conduct are stifling. Some think they do--until they experience it. IS's power is ephemeral, unless the US gives it credibility by making their movement the equivalent of Nazi Germany, against which a mighty alliance (led by the US), would march into battle--strewing expensive weapons. IS tries to incite intervention with its videoed beheadings; it's their resupply and recruitment strategy.
We'd be intervening on the side of Shiites, when Sunnis are rising against the murderous Syrian Assad regime, and against blatant discrimination by the Iraqi Shiite government we installed. Shiite Iran is stable, has democratic elements, but is hostile to the US. Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf kingdoms are hardly democratic. Egypt, our most important Sunni client, is a brutal, repressive military regime. All these Sunni states are supposedly US friends.
So, why intervene on either side, especially when this conflict has been going on since Mohammed's death in 632 and the ensuing battle for succession?
I have a better solution: don't take sides and don't intervene. Sell arms only to stable states, profit from the regional conflict, but don't try to control it: the US can't, and shouldn't try. Defense industries could make money from it, however, without costing US lives or increased US debts.
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