War with DAESH/ISIS?

Are these the times when even the NYT promotes war? Yesterday, 12/7/15, in ‘Obama Says of Terrorist Threat: 'We Will Overcome It,’ the NYT reported on Obama’s oval office speech.

You’d think the “paper of record” would cover significant points put forward in the President’s address, but you’d be wrong. There was much about what Obama had done and was doing about Daesh*, aka Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL militarily, but no mention of his major, multilateral initiative with Russia, Iran, China, France and Saudi Arabia (number 4 of his points), in which tentative agreements have already been reached on a process to establish a cease-fire between ‘moderate’ opposition forces and the Syrian Government, with the further tentative agreement that the initial result would be an interim government. Without an agreement, no progress against Daesh is possible. Why? Arab Sunnis rebelling against both Iraqi and Syrian Shiite/Alawite dominated governments are not going to fight against Daesh, which is also Sunni Arab, though extremist thugs, until the conflict between the rest of the (Sunni) opposition is at least tentatively resolved.

Russia’s initial solution—backing Assad—won’t bring Sunnis to its side; it can drive them into the arms of Daesh.

American Republicans call for war with Daesh, inching towards US troops on the ground, but that’s precisely what Daesh wants. It would empower it to portray itself as Islam attacked by Infidels, which would make its current successful worldwide recruiting look pale by comparison.

Yes, it would lose on the battlefield, but we’ve been down that road too many times: The US lost no battles in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, but it effectively lost all three wars. Attacking Daesh directly would have the same result, but it could be global; the West, even Russia and China, could be under constant attack of the kind demonstrated in San Bernardino. We might call it Terror by Example, or Inspirational Terror, instead of a Terror Network.

Further, to demonize and alienate Muslims, as Trump and his ditto-heads advocate, would be counter-productive: it would prime Muslims all over the world, including those in the US (relatively well integrated and prosperous up until now) to be even more receptive to Daesh than its small thuggish fringe has been already.

*Daesh is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State in Syria and the Levant, but it sounds like the Arabic words for one who crushes something underfoot, or one who sows discord, hence it is intensely disliked by Daesh adherents. IS is not appropriate, since it is not a true state, only a conquest gang or a global mafia.

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.

"Apologies"

Terrible, isn't it that America has to "apologize" for a crude youtube movie! Uhm, an embassy spokesperson, in the Egyptian embassy about to be surrounded by protestors, rightly distanced the US from a rancid anti-Muslim piece of propaganda for which America was not responsible.

Romney called this statement an apology and his politicizing a foreign event has blown up in his face. But it's not as if this is a new position for him. He's previously gone around the nation claiming that Obama apologized rather than standing up for America, so he interpreted the sensible statement of the US Embassy in Egypt in terms of his own campaign propaganda. He was reflexively reacting to Obama's famous speech in Cairo.

What Obama attempted, in that famous speech, was to reach out to Muslims worldwide, to demonstrate his understanding of their concerns and to attempt to move US-Muslim relations forward. He said, "There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground." If that were an apology, then the only alternative would be war---for which Americans have no appetite, after two failed wars in the last ten years.

So, it's not just that Romney demonstrated his ability to put his foot in his mouth, especially on foreign affairs; it's that he has shown an inherent inability to see other people from any but his own perspective.

What's Romney's perspective? Much has been made of his flip-flopping on abortion, on global warming, on health care policy and on war policy. But on the latter, he was for the Vietnam War before he was against it (when campaigning for the Senate in Massachusetts), to paraphrase John Kerry, and now is apparently for any war in prospect. He has consistently advocated a "tough" foreign policy, as in adopting Netanyahu's "red line" on Iran's nuclear policy, thereby justifying an immediate attack, identifying Russia as our primary antagonist and vowing he'd name China a currency manipulator (and initiating a trade war) on his first day in office.

So, Romney's perspective is to see any nation not allied with us as against us, and to discount any concerns other nations have, by saying that any attempt to understand them is "apologizing for America." His unconsidered statement about the Egyptian Embassy attack was consistent with his articulated foreign policy--such as it is.

If Rove's and Saudi Arabia's money still wins Romney the election, the United States might embark on a whole series of "wars of choice," which would also be consistent with Romney's insistence that the Pentagon budget not be cut, but increased to 4% of GDP.

So, every other government program would be cut, people would be left without support and the US would be hollowed out by wars, just like the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Not a pretty prospect, but still a possible one.