Islamic State and Attila

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.

US Dysfunction: Who Profits?

We have a nearly dysfunctional political system and conservatives like it that way.

Dick Durban, the Senate Assistant Majority Leader, recently described how he and his colleagues--virtually all Senators and Congress-people--have to go across the street from the Capitol to a bare-bones call center, and spend hours calling for campaign contributions at least several times a week. He described it as his "other job," fundraising.

Now, we have "Super-pacs" and non-profit affiliates collecting many millions of dollars from less than a few hundred multi-millionaires, billionaires and corporations. They are hoping to buy the election of the President, the Senate, the House, and the states. This year billions of dollars may be in play.

There was another period in the US, when the very wealthy virtually owned our government: until the 1901 accession of Teddy Roosevelt to the Presidency. TR's Presidency was a mistake. New York's Republican leadership saw Governor Roosevelt as a troublemaker: they thought they were banishing him to ineffectuality as Vice President. Then, President McKinley, was assassinated and TR became President. He began trust-busting, the beginning of the end of the first Gilded Age, in which "robber barons" boasted of spending money to elect Government to pass laws so that they could make even more money.

The Gilded Age looked much like the late Roman Empire, when the Roman Senatorial class monopolized virtually all the wealth, and used it to protect their own interests: not those of the empire, nor of the other people in it. The latter were reduced to slaves and serfs, and a mercenary military was supposed to protect the Empire and maintain order.

The Fifth Century, the 1890's, it's happening again. But it's not just corruption and class exploitation, this time: it's a complete failure to respond to the most urgent crisis of our era. The inability of Congress to act--brought to you by the corrupt campaign finance and lobbying system--is not only preventing action to alleviate the problem, it's actually promoting policies that will make the problem worse.

Congress has brushed aside any attempt to ameliorate or reverse damaging global climate change. This has happened, even though weather events and scientific data, from ice-cores to global temperatures, to violent storms, to melting polar ice, corroborate not only the global scientific consensus that climate change is happening, but that it's accelerating faster than any but the most radical predictions foresaw. And now, there's an "oil and gas boom" in the US!

Our "robber barons" have bought off Pennsylvania and Ohio, are attempting to buy off New York--allowing fracking anywhere--and along with big corporations that TR would recognize, they are pooling their billions to buy up Congress and the Presidency, so they can amass even more billions, the climate be damned.

We all will be, if they succeed.