“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Saturday, November 21, 2015
The US Security State is not the beginning of the loss of our freedoms - It is the Last Act
IF YOU REALLY CARE ABOUT WHO WE ARE AND WHY, TAKE THE TIME, SPEND THIRTY MINUTES AND BE PREPARED.
LISTEN TO IT FIRST AND THEN PUT IT INTO CONTEXT WITH THE DAILY EVENTS LEADING US FURTHER INTO HELL:
One of the women who works for me shared a video of her child’s school Thanksgiving celebration with children reenacting the “First Thanksgiving”, It was predictably cute with the kids dressed as indians, pilgrims and “settlers”. The children recited snippets about how they came to the US to “be free”, for “liberty “, to a “New World” etc, etc. I am sure that similar day’s have occurred in every American school in the country.
It was one cute patriotic lie and misrepresentation after misrepresentation, state propaganda, as good as it gets. Why do we fear the truth?
The thirty minute lecture gives a brief outline on the context in how we have become everything that differs from the vision presented in the children’s Thanksgiving celebration.
Tomgram: Engelhardt, The National Security State’s Incestuous Relationship with the Islamic State Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 8:00am, November 19, 2015.
A Post-Paris “Clash of Civilizations”?
It’s the Islamic State’s Dream and Marco Rubio Agrees
By Tom Engelhardt
Honestly, I don’t know whether to rant or weep, neither of which are usual impulses for me. In the wake of the slaughter in Paris, I have the urge to write one of two sentences here: Paris changed everything; Paris changes nothing. Each is, in its own way, undoubtedly true. And here’s a third sentence I know to be true: This can’t end well.
Other than my hometown, New York, Paris is perhaps the city where I’ve felt most at ease. I’ve never been to Baghdad (where Paris-style Islamic State terror events are relatively commonplace); or Beirut, where they just began; or Syria’s ravaged Aleppo (thank you, Bashar al-Assad of barrel-bomb terror fame); or Mumbai (which experienced an early version of such a terror attack); or Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, now partly destroyed by the U.S.-backed Saudi air force; or Kabul, where Taliban attacks on restaurants have become the norm; or Turkey’s capital, Ankara, where Islamic State suicide bombers recently killed 97 demonstrators at a peace rally. But I have spent time in Paris. And so, as with my own burning, acrid city on September 11, 2001, I find myself particularly repulsed by the barbaric acts of civilian slaughter carried out by three well-trained, well-organized, well-armed suicide teams evidently organized as a first strike force from the hell of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.
The Paris attacks should not, however, be seen primarily as acts of revenge from a distinctly twisted crew, even though one of the murderers reportedly shouted, “You killed our brothers in Syria and now we are here.” Instead, they were clearly acts of calculated provocation meant to reshape our world in grim ways. Worse yet, their effectiveness was pre-guaranteed because, as has been true since 9/11, the leaders of such terror groups, starting with Osama bin Laden, have grasped the dynamics of our world, of what makes us tick and especially what provokes us into our own barbarous acts, so much better than our leaders, our militaries, or our national security states have understood them (or, for that matter, themselves).
Here in a nutshell is what bin Laden grasped before 9/11: with modest millions of dollars and a relatively small number of followers, he and his movement couldn’t hope to create the world of their fervid dreams. If, however, he could lure the planet’s “sole superpower” into stepping into his universe, military first, it would change everything and so do his work for him. And indeed (see: invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq), an operation mounted for an estimated $400,000 to $500,000, using 19 dedicated (mostly Saudi) followers armed only with paper cutters, did just that.
And it’s never stopped since because, just as bin Laden dreamed, Washington helped loose al-Qaeda and its successor outfits from the constraints of a more organized, controlled world. In these last 14 years of failed wars and conflicts of every sort, American military power, aided and abetted by the Saudis, the British, the French, and other countries on a case-by-case basis, essentially fractured the Greater Middle East. It helped create five failed states (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen), worlds in which terror groups could thrive and in the chaos of which they could attract ever more recruits.
Think of the Islamic State and various al-Qaeda crews as having developed (to steal a term from commentator John Feffer) "splinterlands" strategies. To continue to grow, they need the U.S. and its allies to lend them an eternally destructive hand to further smash the worlds around them. So in response to the Paris attacks, French President Francois Hollande’s statement that “we will lead a war which will be pitiless” was just what the terror doctor ordered, as was the growing pressure in Washington for a “big military response” to Paris. The first French reprisal air strikes against IS’s Syrian “capital,” Raqqa, were indeed launched within two days.
All of this is like manna from heaven for the Islamic State, the more “pitiless” the better. After all, that group’s goal, as they write in their magazine and online, is “the extinction of the gray zone” in our world. In other words, they seek the sharpening of distinctions everywhere, which means the opening of abysses where complexity and interaction once existed. Their dream is to live in a black-and-white world of utter religious and political clarity (and calamity), while engaging in what American pundits like to term a “clash of civilizations.” And -- what a joy for the Islamic State! -- Republican presidential candidates are already responding to the Paris attacks, as Marco Rubio did, by calling for just such “a civilizational conflict with radical Islam.” As he put it, “This is not a grievance-based conflict. This is a clash of civilizations... And either they win, or we win.” Jeb Bush similarly responded: “This is an organized effort to destroy Western civilization and we need to lead in this regard.” The answer, of course, is “war.” Various Republican candidates are also now calling for only accepting Syrian Christians as refugees here. You can’t be more black and white than that.
In the European context and with the destruction of those “gray zones” in mind, the Paris attacks should also be considered the Islamic State’s first foray into the politics of the 2017 French presidential campaign. Think of those mass killings as a wholehearted endorsement of the extremist candidate Marine le Pen, whose poll numbers were already on the rise even before the attacks, and her anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant National Front Party. She is now, in effect, IS's chosen candidate, the one most likely to go after gray zones. In the process, of course, pressure on France’s large, increasingly isolated Muslim population will only increase.
Such attacks are guaranteed to put wind in the already billowing sails of far right-wing parties all across Europe. It should, for instance, have come as no surprise that, in the wake of the Paris attacks, Konrad Szymanski, the European affairs minister for Poland’s new far-right government, almost instantly declared his country unlikely to abide by recently negotiated European Union (EU) quotas on accepting refugees from the Greater Middle East. And we’re only going to see more of this in the post-Paris world. With the assistance of IS and other jihadist groups, the elimination of such gray areas in Europe could, in the end, help crack the EU open, while pushing France’s Muslims into an even worse situation, which would, of course, mean more potential recruits for groups like the Islamic State.
The United States, a place where, in the years since 9/11, the danger of being attacked by an Islamic terrorist could be slotted in somewhere between being “shot” by your dog and being shot by a toddler who has found a loaded, unlocked gun in your house, purse, or car. Among the many perils of American life from car crashes to suicide, E. coli illnesses to floods, injuries from crumbling infrastructure to mass killings by non-Islamic lone wolves, Islamic terrorism remains at the bottom of the barrel in the company of other frightening but rare events like shark attacks. Yet the American national security state has essentially been built and funded to protect you from that danger alone.
Put another way, the officials of that security state have bet the farm on the preeminence of the terrorist “threat,” which has, not so surprisingly, left them eerily reliant on the Islamic State and other such organizations for the perpetuation of their way of life, their career opportunities, their growing powers, and their relative freedom to infringe on basic rights, as well as for that comfortably all-embracing blanket of secrecy that envelops their activities. Note that, as with so many developments in our world which have caught them by surprise, the officials who run our vast surveillance network and its staggering ranks of intelligence operatives and analysts seemingly hadn’t a clue about the IS plot against Paris (even though intelligence officials in at least one other country evidently did). Nonetheless, whether they see actual threats coming or not, they need Paris-style alarms and nightmares, just as they need local “plots,” even ones semi-engineered by FBI informers or created online by lone idiots, not lone wolves. Otherwise, why would the media keep prattling on about terrorism or presidential candidates keep humming the terror tune, and how, then, would public panic levels remain reasonably high on the subject when so many other dangers are more pressing in American life?
The relationship between that ever-more powerful shadow government in Washington and the Islamic terrorists of our planet is both mutually reinforcing and unnervingly incestuous. Both, of course, emerge as winners when the gray zones begin to disappear. When Paris is hit, after all, law enforcement agencies in the U.S. instantly increase their “alert levels”; the CIA director pushes back hard against "hand-wringing over intrusive government spying" and the minimalist restrictions on electronic surveillance put in place in recent years; the FBI heightens “its surveillance of Americans under investigation for apparent ties to the Islamic State”; and, among other things, more police patrols are sent out in major cities, while local law enforcement “vigilance” rises even in places like Niagara Falls, New York. In Los Angeles, post-Paris, extra patrols were typically sent “to ‘critical sites’ and [the city’s police department was] monitoring the ongoing situation, even though it said there were no known threats.”
The lack of obvious threats is, of course, beside the point when American “safety” is at stake! In the meantime, the road toward a more locked-down, secretive, governmentally intrusive, less democratic world is being well paved.
Think of this as a kind of global danse macabre in which ISIS attacks -- eight committed guys, some possibly trained in combat in Syria or Iraq, with AK-47s, suicide vests, and rental cars -- spread death, chaos, panic, and alarm in our world at next to no cost at all. In response, Washington and its allies engage in a big-budget version of the same, including intensified air campaigns which will, of course, end up taking out civilian targets and infrastructure.
Think of what the U.S. military does when it heads out to destroy those gray zones as the Kobane or Sinjar Strategy. Kobane was a largely Kurdish town on the Turkish border that IS militants besieged and partially took in 2014. They were driven back early this year by the same combination of forces that recently retook the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq: Kurdish fighters and American warplanes. By the time both were retaken, American bombs and Islamic State IEDs and booby-trapped houses had insured that those towns would be largely uninhabitable wrecks, littered with corpses and the skeletons of buildings.
Similarly, plans by the U.S. to intensify the bombing of those Syrian oilfields under the control of the Islamic state (to cut into its supply of funds) reflect a strategy that, whatever its immediate successes, is guaranteed to further wreck the infrastructure of the region. This will help ensure that, no matter what happens to the Islamic State, “Syria” or any state structure like it will be no more. Such acts of destruction, largely from the air, have been taking place across the Greater Middle East since 2001. From Libya to Syria, Iraq to Yemen, the Sinjar Strategy has demonstrably done little to bring success to the U.S. and its allies in their various wars. It has, however, helped create a zone of failed and increasingly fragile states. It has left uprooted populations leading skeletal lives in haunted lands that are also hunting grounds for extremists of every sort. Consider this the dream world of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as well as the perfect breeding ground for yet more extreme nightmares of our age. A dance of death indeed.
As it happens, I’ve barely ranted and not yet wept. If anything, on reaching the end of this piece, I find myself depressed. The future shouldn’t be so easy to see or so repetitively predictable. And it’s a terrible thing to know that, as the gray zones of our planet continue to disappear and wrecked worlds spread, the tempo of that dance of mutual death and destruction stands every chance of speeding up as the "music" only grows louder.
Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He is a fellow of the Nation Institute and runs TomDispatch.com. His latest book is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turse’s Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
The dark descension of the Republican party into outright racism and cynically playing off the irrational fears of the public over the Syrian refugee crisis has been worse. We now know the attackers weren’t Syrian and weren’t even refugees. It was a cruel rumor or hoax that one was thought to have come through Europe with a Syrian passport system, but that was cleared up days ago. But in the world of Republican primaries, who cares about facts? …
It doesn’t matter that the US has a robust screening system that has seen over 750,000 refugees come to the United States without incident – the Republican-led House has now voted to grind the already intensive screening process to a virtual halt (they were disgracefully joined by many Democrats). Chris Christie said the US should refuse widows and orphans. Rand Paul introduced a law to bar the entire Muslim world from entering the US as refugees. Donald Trump has suggested he would digitally track every Muslim in the county.
AS THE INTERCEPT’S LEE FANG DOCUMENTED IN DETAIL, THE RHETORIC SPEWING FROM THE MOUTHS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY SOUNDS ALMOST WORD FOR WORD LIKE THE RACISTS DURING WORLD WAR II THAT WANTED THE US TO REFUSE JEWS ON THE BASIS THAT THEY MIGHT BE SECRET NAZIS.
Even the supposedly establishment Republicans have debased themselves with rhetoric that one can only hope that one day they regret. This video of Jeb Bush struggling to explain why he would create a religious litmus test for refugees and how families are going to “prove” they’re Christian is truly cringeworthy. As Barack Obama said in his admirable condemnation of Bush and others on Tuesday, such talk is “shameful” and “un-American.”
One can say a lot of awful things about Jeb’s brother, George W Bush, including that his disastrous wars that led to the Isis mess we are in now, but he did do one thing right: he was always willing to publicly speak out in favor of the vast majority of Muslims who are peaceful and abhor terrorism just like everyone else. As Chris Hayes noted, not a word of this touching speech Bush gave at an Islamic Center a week after 9/11 would ever be uttered by any of the Republican candidates today. Instead they compete over who can disparage and debase the Muslim community with the broadest brush stroke.
There are plenty of questions to ask in the aftermath of the attacks to learn how terrorism can better be prevented in the future. Instead public discourse has veered so far off-course that it’s hard to see when it will return.
The seeds of ISIS were planted in Iraq when its parent organization, al-Qaeda in Iraq, though battered, survived “the surge” of U.S. ground forces into the country beginning in 2007—the final and tactically most successful phase of the counterinsurgency campaign, which at its peak involved some 170,000 U.S. troops. Al-Qaeda in Iraq itself was born from the American occupation; a new occupation would produce the same kind of resistance, which ISIS or some other group could exploit.
...The ISIS franchise in Libya seems to have arisen from the anarchy introduced in that country by NATO’s destruction of the Qaddafi regime and the utter failure to plan for its replacement. Because these and similar groups are so deeply embedded in local struggles, destruction of ISIS “central”—that is, the pseudo-state led by the self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that currently governs parts of Syria and Iraq—cannot eliminate them. The reverse might be helpful, however. For example, if President Sisi were to pursue more moderate policies in Egypt, he might create a less supportive political environment for ISIS.
Muslim Marine Masterfully Bashes Trump by Posting His Military ID Badge: ‘Where’s Yours?’
Trump never served in the military, deferring his draft call-up four times during the Vietnam War.
Republican presidential candidate and bombastic billionaire Donald Trump this week refused to rule out placing U.S. Muslims in a database and requiring them to carry special identification.
Sergeant Tayyib Rashid, a veteran of the Marine Corps, took exception to those comments and challenged Trump, posting a picture of his military ID on Twitter with the words, “I’m an American Muslim and I already carry a special ID badge. Where’s yours?”
Brussels has been put into security lockdown after Belgian intelligence received 'precise information' of a planned Paris-style ISIS attack in the capital.
Belgium’s prime minister Charles Michel confirmed that the decision to raise the terror alert level in Brussels was taken 'based on quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris.'
Service has been halted on the Brussels subway system and heavily armed police and soldiers are patrolling the Belgian capital amid a high security alert.
The country's national security center has raised the terror threat level to Level four after fears of a 'serious and imminent' terror threat involving 'weapons and explosives'.
The main points in the video and the Englehardt article above have been made by some on this blog for years. Yet, even given that, I never expected to live to see the day when a presidential candidate would suggest a portion of our people be listed and tracked by the government. Or, worse yet, that he could be leading the polls of one of the major parties. It's like some bizarre dystopic novel.
The have won. OBL, in his wildest wet dreams dreams, couldn't have imagined how successful one attack would be on what was at the time the only hyper-power in the world. FDR said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself". Bush said, "I think we agree, the past is over." Who would suspect they would both be so right.
Well, thankfully, it's not the muslims we have to worry about -
November 21, 2015 Hillary Clinton disqualifies herself as commander-in-chief By Trevor Thomas
As if we need even more evidence, yesterday Hillary again proved herself incompetent when it comes to dealing with issues of national security, radical Islam, and even Islam in general. In a campaign speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, Clinton went to near comical lengths to avoid mentioning "Islam" with "terror" or "terrorism."
"Let’s be clear," Clinton said: "Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people, and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism." .........................
If you haven't heard about all the muslim protests in USA against the attacks, it's because our Jewish controlled media has blacked the subject out.....
How the crazy Trump Muslim database story got started By Byron York (@ByronYork) • 11/20/15 6:59 PM
That was it. With the scoop in hand, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow jumped into action, sending an inquiry to the Trump campaign: "Would Mr. Trump rule out a database of American Muslims, or would he consider that? And would he rule out having them carry a form of ID that notes their religion, or would he consider that?"
Maddow did not hear back from Trump, but after an event in Iowa, an MSNBC reporter asked a clearly distracted Trump on a ropeline, "Should there be a database system that tracks Muslims here in this country?" Trump again beat around the bush, but later in the interview ended up agreeing. In another brief encounter around the same time, with CNN, Trump noted that he had never said anything about a database in the Yahoo interview and declined to engage on the issue.
Trump's offhand decision to tell MSNBC he would implement a database was an enormously stupid thing to do. And by Friday afternoon, Trump tweeted, "I didn't suggest a database -- a reporter did. We must defeat Islamic terrorism & have surveillance, including a watch list, to protect America."
But the damage had been done. In the end, the responsibility is always the candidate's to be on guard for attempts, by journalists or rival campaign operatives, to entice him into saying damaging things. Sometimes those are attempts to create a story out of nothing. The Muslim database affair seems a particularly audacious example of that.
But the damage had been done. In the end, the responsibility is always the candidate's to be on guard for attempts, by journalists or rival campaign operatives, to entice him into saying damaging things. Sometimes those are attempts to create a story out of nothing. The Muslim database affair seems a particularly audacious example of that.
Bullshit.
The question is so outrageous, Trump should have Immediately answered with, "Are you nutz? The very idea is against everything we stand for as a free and democratic nation. The idea is absurd. It is disgusting."
...with CNN, Trump noted that he had never said anything about a database in the Yahoo interview and declined to engage on the issue.
Never said anything? Who answered the friggin question Mr. Trump?
He proves himself an idiot and a bigot and then doesn't have the balls to either admit it or apologize and say he was wrong. The leader in the GOP nominating process is a complete dick. Worse, he is the leader in the GOP nominating process with less than a year to run until the election.
The very definition of a self-centered, out of touch hick: to think that the readers of an International blog would be the least bit interested in the foibles of his local, inept sports team. It induces vertigo.
The only interesting thing about the Vandals football program is that the draft dodger, Robert Peterson, finds the dreadful collegiate athletic program of interest.
As for the rest of the US, George S. Patton described our feelings ...
"America loves a winner, and will not tolerate a loser ..."
Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson not only tolerates a loser, he celebrates them.
Ben, admittedly, hasn't quite mastered foreign policy yet, thinking the Chinese were in the middle east. They are commercially but he was thinking militarily, so it seemed.
But then of course Obama has made a total mess of it, so he couldn't be any worse than that.
The Muslim Brotherhood was soundly defeated, in Egypt, by the policies that the US has engaged in while Mr Obama has been President. That our draft dodger has displayed far less understanding of US foreign policy than has Dr Carson.
You've said we must destroy ISIS. What do you suggest ?
************
November 21, 2015 Americans slaughtered in recent Islamic terror attacks around the world By Carol Brown
Just one week ago, an American was murdered by Muslim terrorists in Paris. The victim’s name was Nohemi Gonzalez. She was a 23-year-old college student spending a semester studying abroad. She lost her life because some devout Muslims acted on the teachings of the Quran. And so she was slaughtered in a barrage of bullets.
Two other Americans suffered leg injuries in the attacks. At least one of them required surgery.
A few days after the Paris attacks, another American was murdered by jihadists when a “Palestinian” terrorist set out to shoot as many people as possible in the West Bank. In the line of fire was American Ezra Schwartz, who was studying in Israel for a year. The young man was gunned down as he set out to deliver food to Israeli soldiers.
Then on Friday, an American in Mali working on development projects, Anita Datar, was killed during an Islamic terror attack. A Peace Corps veteran, Ms. Datar was mourned by her brother:
Anita was one of the kindest and most generous people we know. She loved her family and her work tremendously. Everything she did in her life she did to help others — as a mother, public health expert, daughter, sister and friend.
Where is the outrage? And more importantly, where is the action?
War has been declared against us and is being waged with ruthless savagery. In the face of this, the president and the entire Democratic Party are staging an all-out PR battle to convince Americans that this has nothing to do with Islam as they put their best foot forward to weaken our national security and frame us as responsible for these barbaric attacks. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for a small sampling.)
If people with access to the bullhorn have never read the Quran and know nothing about its teachings, they need to shut up and learn. And if they don’t want to learn, then they just need to shut up.
Let each and every one of us educate the clueless, ever mindful of the fact that the Quran is not written in chronological order and that Chapter 2, Verse 106 (abrogation) forces the bellicose Medina verses to replace or override the earlier peaceful verses written in Mecca. The result is a totalitarian doctrine that mandates world domination.
Spread the word. (Consider buying The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, by Robert Spencer, as a Christmas gift.)
Hat tips: CBS, Fox News, Reuters, The Right Scoop, Breitbart, Counterjihad Report, Atlas Shrugs
War Room Former Obama Terrorism Adviser: Change Your Strategy, Mr. President
America’s preeminent counterterrorism official says ISIL can be defeated only if we treat it like the Taliban in 2001.
By Michael Vickers
November 20, 2015 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
One of the duties of a senior policy adviser is to tell the president when his strategy isn’t working. By any measure, our strategy in Iraq and Syria is not succeeding, or is not succeeding fast enough. We are playing a long game, when a more rapid and disruptive strategy is required. In my role as a senior counterterrorism adviser to both Presidents Bush and Obama, I played a major role in our counterterrorism campaigns against Al Qaeda, and in the Osama bin Laden raid; earlier, I was the principal strategist for the covert war in Afghanistan against the Soviets. Were I still in government, this is some of what I would say.
First, time is not on our side. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is not just a regional insurgent army. It is a terrorist group with global reach and the leader of global jihad. We cannot rely on intelligence to disrupt all plots, and ISIL cannot be contained any more than Al Qaeda could prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The flow of Western passport holders in and out of Syria and the sanctuary ISIL enjoys there to train operatives and plan attacks is a clear and present danger. ISIL must be disrupted, dismantled and defeated. Whatever we would do if ISIL made good on its threat to attack Washington, D.C. and New York, we should instead do now, before the attack occurs.
Second, we need a “Syria-first” strategy to replace the Iraq-first strategy we’ve been pursuing. So far, two-thirds of coalition airstrikes have been in Iraq, as have the bulk of our capacity building efforts. But it’s now clear that the threat in Iraq is local, while in Syria, it’s global. It’s Syria where ISIL has its principal sanctuary, and that’s where the battle for the future of the Middle East is now taking place.
Third, we need a strategy that draws its inspiration from President Bush’s 2001 Afghanistan campaign and President Reagan’s Afghanistan strategy in the 1980s. ISIL, as its name implies, is a de facto state. It holds territory, controls population, and funds its operations from resources that it exploits on territory it controls. If there’s one thing the American military knows how to do it is defeating an opposing force trying to hold ground.
It took us two months in late 2001 to overthrow the Taliban/Al Qaeda regime in Afghanistan. The reasons for our success in 2001 and our lack of success in 2014-15 are twofold: a far more intense air campaign and an indigenous ground force, led by Special Operations and CIA advisers, that could rapidly exploit the effects of air power. We conducted as many airstrikes in two months in Afghanistan in 2001 as we have in 16 months in Iraq and Syria. We should increase our strike tempo and weight of attacks significantly to bring both mass and precision to bear on ISIL’s stronghold.
Airstrikes are not enough, however. We must leverage the moderate Syrian opposition—and they do exist in the tens of thousands—to dislodge ISIL and Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, from their territory. As we did in Afghanistan, we must support the moderate opposition with overwhelming air power, substantially increase the flow of arms to the moderate opposition, and place special operations and intelligence advisers with them. With American assistance, a much smaller insurgent force defeated the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. With our many Sunni partners, we can do the same in Syria.
Dislodging ISIL and Al Qaeda from Syria does not mean, moreover, that U.S. forces have to occupy and try to pacify the country afterward. As we should have learned, that does not play to our strengths. There are a lot of operational options between what we did in Iraq and what we didn’t do in Libya.
Fourth, we must not succumb to the false hope that ending the Syrian civil war is the key to defeating ISIL, and that we should join forces with Russia (and Bashar Assad) to do it. The only winners in that case will be Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The war will not end, and we will further alienate our Sunni allies and risk greater instability in the Middle East.
Assad must go for the conflict to end. He is a greater magnet for global jihad than U.S. forces were in Iraq at the height of the insurgency. To effect a political transition in Syrian, we must keep the pressure on Assad, much as Reagan did in Afghanistan in the 1980s while he was negotiating with Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev on a range of important issues. Abandoning our counter-Assad strategy would fatally undermine our Syria effort, and would have repercussions far beyond Syria.
Russia intervened only because Assad was in trouble. We are on offense and the Russians, Iranians and the Syrian regime are on defense. Why we would bail out the Russians and Iranians from their Syrian misadventure is beyond me. Putin will certainly extract a price for any cooperation. We should not forget his invasion of Ukraine and his desire to overthrow the European order. Russian air power, moreover, adds very little to what the U.S. can bring to bear. Russia is a marginal force in Syria. We defeated a far more powerful Russian army in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and we can defeat their effort now to keep Assad in power.
Fifth, a more intense application of air power and combat advisers will go a long way in Iraq as well. Our Iraq problem is fundamentally political, but whatever Iraq’s political future, ISIL cannot be allowed to maintain sanctuaries there. The Sunni tribes will not revolt without decisive U.S. engagement, and severing the main lines of communication between Syria and Iraq will isolate ISIL’s forces in Iraq.
Finally, we must take the fight to ISIL’s affiliates, particularly in Libya, Egypt and Nigeria. And we must not let up on Al Qaeda. The world’s most dangerous bomb-maker is still plotting in Yemen, and Al Qaeda is strengthening its position in Afghanistan.
An Afghanistan-style campaign in Syria won’t bring our conflict with ISIL to an end, but it will deprive the group of its state and its key sanctuary. And it will buy us time and improved homeland security. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
Michael Vickers, a former Special Forces and CIA operations officer, was Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, 2011-2015 and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Low Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities, 2007-2011. He was the principal strategist for the largest and most successful covert action program in CIA’s history, the defeat of the Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
ISIS is al-Qeada, the policy followed in 2001, an abject failure. That a draft dodger advocates for the replication of that military failure, beyond strange.
From 1973 to 1986, Michael Vickers served as an Army Special Forces sergeant, later as a commissioned officer, and CIA paramilitary operations officer. In the mid-1980s, Vickers became involved with Operation Cyclone, the CIA program to arm Islamist Mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. What could possibly go wrong?
He was the head military strategist for the US, coordinating an effort that involved ten countries and providing direction to forces made up of over 500,000 Afghan fighters.[6] Later he was Senior Vice President, Strategic Studies, at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), during which he provided advice on Iraq strategy to US President George H.W. Bush and his war cabinet. What could possibly go wrong?
The very idea that Assad must go, because the jihadists are drawn to fight his government, really a bizarre position. One that advocates for giving the jihadists what they want, the elimination of a non-Islamic regime in the Middle East.
Just what the Muslim Brotherhood has wanted for decades.
Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson now posting support for a policy of appeasement towards the Islamic State.
The only mistake Assad made was his response to the initial uprising was slow and weak. It was never just an internal uprising as it was a result of the US following Israel’s foreign policy instead of our own. It was never any of our business.
U.S. presses Iraqi army to get on with Ramadi offensive Jim Michaels, USA TODAY 2:12 p.m. EST November 19, 2015 EPA IRAQ RAMADI OFFENISVE WAR CONFLICTS (GENERAL) IRQ
(Photo: European Pressphoto Agency) 46 CONNECTTWEETLINKEDIN 10 COMMENTEMAILMORE
Sounding a new note of urgency, the U.S.-led coalition combating the Islamic State is pressing Iraq’s armed forces to launch a final assault to recapture the key city of Ramadi, a campaign entering its sixth month with only limited progress.
“It's time for the Iraqis to … make this final move,” said Col. Steve Warren, the coalition military spokesman in Iraq.
The remarks reflect a change in the Pentagon's public comments about the offensive. Pentagon officials had earlier said the offensive had not stalled and emphasized the complexity of the battle. But now that the Pentagon has provided the assistance Iraq's armed forces had requested to retake the city, it is stepping up pressure on Iraq to move ahead against the militants holed up in the city, 80 miles west of Baghdad.
Warren said the coalition has provided enough air power, training and other support to launch a successful offensive against the heavily outnumbered Islamic State fighters, who seized the city in May. “All the pieces are in place,” Warren said.
The pressure from the U.S. military comes as the Islamic State has pressed attacks around the world, including Friday's terror attacks in Paris, twin bombings in Beirut on Nov. 12 and the downing of a Russian airliner over Egypt on Oct. 31. The extremist group claimed it was behind all incidents, which caused nearly 400 deaths overall.
Since those attacks, France and Russia have stepped up bombing raids on Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria, but the militants do not appear to have suffered significant casualties, highlighting the limited impact of airstrikes that are not backed up by ground forces.
The prolonged battle for Ramadi underscores the need for an effective force of combat troops, which the Iraqi military is struggling to field. The U.S. strategy is to rely on local forces in Iraq and Syria because President Obama has ruled out sending U.S. troops for ground combat.
The coalition has backed up Iraq's military with more than 190 strikes along the Euphrates River Valley, which includes Ramadi, over the past month. The U.S. military also has provided training and equipment to breach minefields around the city.
A force of about 10,000 Iraqi troops has surrounded Ramadi and has closed in on the city center. An estimated 600 to 1,000 militants are inside the city, where they have established elaborate defenses using roadside bombs and other obstacles.
Iraqi forces have met stiff resistance as they tried to breach the defenses despite their numerical advantage. “When that point to that spear gets blunted against some stiff resistance, it could ... stop all the rest,” Warren said. “That's the case here.”
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has made the recapture of Ramadi a key part of the U.S. strategy to defeat the Islamic State. But dependence on Iraq's military is proving challenging. The armed forces collapsed when the militants swept into Iraq from Syria last year, and have been slow to recover.
Much of the military success against the extremist group since then has been achieved by Kurdish forces in northern Iraq and, to a lesser degree, by Shiite militias, two groups that have so far displayed a greater willingness to fight. This month, Kurdish forces aided by coalition airstrikes pushed the militants out of Sinjar in northern Iraq and cut a major Islamic State supply line linking Syria and Iraq.
Capturing a much larger city like Ramadi requires the country’s armed forces because they have the firepower needed for such an ambitious campaign.
Iraq’s forces, however, have been weakened by conflicts among Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in the country, which has resulted in a military of competing interests and has undermined loyalty toward the Shiite-dominated central government.
The result is a fighting force with low morale, said Ben Connable, a senior analyst at RAND Corp. and a retired Marine Corps intelligence officer. “War is a contest of two opposing sides and one side doesn’t have a will.”
WASHINGTON, November 21, 2015 — U.S. and coalition military forces have continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.
Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.
Strikes in Syria
Attack, ground-attack, fighter, bomber and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 22 strikes in Syria:
-- Near Abu Kamal, one strike struck an ISIL crude oil collection point.
-- Near Al Hasakah, four strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL building, an ISIL car bomb, and four ISIL vehicles.
-- Near Al Hawl, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units.
-- Near Ar Raqqah, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL checkpoint.
-- Near Dayr Ar Zawr, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL vehicles.
-- Near Mar'a, 13 strikes struck 12 separate ISIL tactical units and an ISIL headquarters, destroying four ISIL fighting positions, three ISIL buildings, an ISIL heavy machine gun, an ISIL staging area, damaged an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL building, and wounded an ISIL fighter.
Strikes in Iraq
Bomber, attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 20 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:
-- Near Albu Hayat, one strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed three ISIL buildings.
-- Near Bayji, one strike destroyed an ISIL tactical vehicle.
-- Near Kisik, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position, an ISIL vehicle, and suppressed an ISIL mortar position.
-- Near Mosul, four strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed five ISIL fighting positions, three ISIL heavy machine guns, an ISIL bunker, and an ISIL vehicle.
-- Near Qayyarah, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL weapons cache and three ISIL fighting positions.
-- Near Ramadi, six strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL command and control facility, 15 ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL buildings, five ISIL heavy machine guns, an ISIL recoilless rifle, an ISIL mortar system, an ISIL IED facility, an ISIL resupply warehouse, and denied ISIL access to terrain.
-- Near Sinjar, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun, an ISIL fighting position, and an ISIL checkpoint.
-- Near Sultan Abdallah, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas.
This last week that I've been posting these, the coalition is getting real bizzy in Ramadi.
Definition of a ‘Strike’
A strike, as defined in the CJTF releases, means one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect for that location.
So, the officials said, having a single aircraft deliver a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike. Multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, with the cumulative effect of making that facility [or facilities] harder or impossible to use is also considered a single strike, task force officials said.
Accordingly, CJTF-OIR does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in each strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.
John Kerry runs his mouth more thoughtlessly than The Donald -
The real clash of civilisation is in the West’s attitude to terror A great deal was revealed by the different reactions to Paris of our PM and the US Secretary of State Charles Moore
By Charles Moore
6:49PM GMT 20 Nov 2015 Follow
Comments2566 Comments
On Monday, David Cameron said that “it is not good enough to say simply that Islam is a religion of peace and then to deny any connection between the religion of Islam and the extremists”. The following day, the US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in Paris, was asked about the murderous attacks in that city the previous Friday. Mr Kerry said: “There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo (the slaughter of the staff of the “blasphemous” French satirical magazine in January), and I think everybody would feel that. There was a sort of particularised focus (to the Charlie Hebdo attack) and perhaps even a legitimacy – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, OK, they’re really angry because of this and that.”
"There is something wrong with a rights-based culture much more obsessed with catering for difference than with bolstering our common freedoms which really matter"
In these two remarks are contained differing beliefs about our civilisation. The argument about how the West should deal with Islamist terror and extremism turns on the difference. If Mr Kerry’s side wins, our civilisation will lose.
Mr Cameron was trying to state that membership of our civilisation has a price which every citizen must pay. Mr Kerry was saying (though he half-realised he shouldn’t be saying it) that grievance and anger against Western society felt by a group can sort of justify violence. The Friday night attacks, he went on, had “nothing to do with Islam”, but were just “criminality” and “psychopathism”. His Charlie Hebdo comparison implied that, if they had been to do with Islam, they would have had near-legitimacy.
Mr Kerry is factually wrong, of course, in stating that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam. I discussed it at lunch in London with a friend who knows a lot about terrorism. “Look,” he said, “If you now stand up in this crowded restaurant and shout 'Allahu Akbhar’, everyone will dive under the table.” We agreed, and added, that if I were to jump up and shout “Jesus Christ is Lord”, people would merely pause, look embarrassed and then go on eating. In the current state of the two religions (both of which have pasts stained by extreme violence), one is dramatically more belligerent than the other. Muslims shouted “Allahu Akbhar!” as they ran, firing their guns, into the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali.
But the key point for political leaders is not to debate theology which they may not (and need not) understand. It is to defend effectively the civilisation of which they are an important part.
In our Western politics, there is plenty of common ground about what our civilisation consists in – freedom of speech and religion, the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, accountable institutions, independent universities, habits of tolerance. No one could win a general election in most Western countries who did not, more or less, think along these lines. The Left would put more emphasis on equality and the Right on opportunity, but there is not a massive difference between the mainstream on either side about what, day to day, our civilisation should look like.
Where there is a massive difference is about how civilisation can be sustained. This arises from a difference about what where it starts. On the one hand are those who think it rests on universal values, often as proclaimed in written declarations of rights. On the other hand are those who think it arises from history, and is developed by particular people in particular ways at particular times.
If you are on the universalist side, you feel guilty about any bad deed done in the Western past and you get terribly worried by anything which deviates from the general rule. If civilisation is built on innate, global human rights, those rights must be upheld for all people at all times, almost regardless of circumstances. So if, for example, an Islamist extremist might conceivably face torture if deported to his country of origin, he must not be deported, whatever the expense of keeping him here and whatever his danger to our public good.
The particularists think differently. They are equally opposed to torture, but they are prouder of their history and have a much stronger sense that the freedoms and rights they value do not exist in a vacuum, but because of their countries’ past achievements. Those freedoms and rights flow from citizenship and are protected by an enforceable judicial and political authority, usually a national one. So if a case arises in which the liberty and security of the particularist’s fellow citizens are threatened by the rights of a non-citizen, the particularist sides heavily with his fellow citizens. And if some of his fellow citizens choose to spit on their common citizenship – for example, by attacking people who serve in the armed forces, or by demanding their own courts – his patience will not be endless.
If you ask the universalists why Britain became a parliamentary democracy with the rule of law, they will say that it was because enlightened people spread the right ideas. The particularist won’t disagree, but he would add that other, tougher things played a role – the Royal Navy, for instance, and a minimum of 22 miles of sea between us and any other country. He knows that nothing worth having can survive undefended.
"It is an unfeasibly expensive First World luxury to pretend that the entire baroque panoply of European Human Rights can be completely unaffected by the Paris attacks"
In the current debate about migration, the universalists will say that an end to the Schengen agreement or a limitation of the rights of refugees would be an appalling affront to our values and “just what the terrorists want”. The particularists will say: “If Europe lets in millions of people unvetted, several thousand of them will be Islamists who will try to kill us, so we shouldn’t.”
My children’s generation have a phrase which I like. “That’s a First World problem,” they will say, meaning a problem which it is a luxury to have – “Oh dear, we haven’t got room to build a second garage” or “I have to go ten miles to find organic sun-dried tomatoes.”
There is a sense in which universalists, though they think they speak for all mankind, suffer from First World problems. It is reported, for instance, that Mr Speaker Bercow wants transgender lavatories in the House of Commons. It is increasingly common in government buildings for prayer-rooms to be provided for the benefit (though this is not stated) of Muslim staff. These are not exactly bad developments – a place where everyone can pray could help stressed workers – but there is something wrong with a rights-based culture much more obsessed with catering for difference than with bolstering our common freedoms which really matter.
For the past 200 years and more, our country has not (with the exception of IRA supporters) contained significant numbers of people dedicated to preaching hatred of its way of life and violence against its people. Today, it does, and so does almost every country in the Western world. It is an unfeasibly expensive First World luxury to pretend that the entire baroque panoply of European Human Rights can be completely unaffected by this change.
Unless that pretence is dropped, peaceful citizens of all Western countries will – to steal Mr Kerry’s phrase about extremists – “be really angry because of this and that”.
November 22, 2015 Would liberals mind living next to mosques? By Ed Straker
Hamtramck, Michigan has a majority-Muslim city council, so businesses find it impossible to get a liquor license within 500 feet of a mosque. But what disturbs residents the most are the calls to prayers, five times a day, starting at 6 AM................
"The Polish people think we were invading them," said Masud Khan, one of the mosque's leaders, recalling that time in an interview earlier this month. "We were a big threat to their religion and culture. Now their days are gone."
The Poles of Hamtramck need to hire a good lawyer, maybe Alan Dershowitz, to sue Hamtramck on the grounds that damn noise five times a day is 'establishing a religion', and mandate a noise ordinance.
Now, of course, some churches have bells that they ring. But they don't ring them at 6 AM. And they don't amplify them from speakers on the roof. And the ringing of bells is fundamentally different from the call to prayer, which, in and of itself, is a prayer. If you listen to one, you will hear someone wailing in Arabic. What has America become when we are forced to hear prayers, in a foreign language, while walking the streets of our home towns?
This is not what the founding fathers meant when they enacted the First Amendment. Americans should not be forced to listen to prayers of other religions. This is religious oppression. If a church were doing this, liberals would be up and arms. But because mosques are doing this, liberals are silent.
Most American Muslims are not terrorists. But some American Muslims are trying to push their culture on us in an oppressive way that no other religion has ever been permitted to. Besides the security concerns, it's something else we need to think about when admitting more Muslims into the country.
If the US wants to defeat ISIS, it first has to defeat Aipac, the Neocons and end Saudi support for the enemies of ISIS.
It has to stop the crap, that Israel is a vital ally. Israel is no such thing. 14 years of the US fighting on the side of Israel’s foreign policy ambitions has been the single worst foreign policy decision since Woodrow Wilson involved the US in WW1.
There is no winning, no vital interests and no benefit supporting Israel.
Ignoring and fighting against motivated and capable Islamic forces opposed to ISIS because Israel prefers and demands that we do so is insane, suicidal and treasonous to US interests.
The Kurds, Iran, the legitimate army of Syria, Hezbollah, Shia militias of Iraq and Iran, backed by Russia, provide the base for a victory against ISIS. Until that is understood by the clueless in Washington, our policy of support for Israel and Saudi Arabia, our insane overseas military web and the inability of our corrupt power sluts in Washington to control themselves will wreck and ruin us.
The first step to defeating ISIS is to end support for Saudi Arabia and remove political cover for Israel. Ending the US habit of providing Israel the UN Security Council veto and ending US military ties , will do more to encourage the Islamic coalition to defeat ISIS than any amount of bombing.
Secretary of State John Kerry will meet next week with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the region to try to stop ongoing violence, although a senior US official insisted on Saturday the visit was not a renewed effort to broker a peace accord.
The State Department said Kerry would travel to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Ramallah on a trip that will also include a stop in the United Arab Emirates to discuss the Syrian conflict.
Kerry last met Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Berlin in October, to try to end a spate of bloodshed and stop what Washington regarded as provocative statements by Israeli and Palestinian leaders over the management of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque.
One of the women who works for me shared a video of her child’s school Thanksgiving celebration with children reenacting the “First Thanksgiving”, It was predictably cute with the kids dressed as indians, pilgrims and “settlers”. The children recited snippets about how they came to the US to “be free”, for “liberty “, to a “New World” etc, etc. I am sure that similar day’s have occurred in every American school in the country.
ReplyDeleteIt was one cute patriotic lie and misrepresentation after misrepresentation, state propaganda, as good as it gets. Why do we fear the truth?
The thirty minute lecture gives a brief outline on the context in how we have become everything that differs from the vision presented in the children’s Thanksgiving celebration.
Tomgram: Engelhardt, The National Security State’s Incestuous Relationship with the Islamic State
DeletePosted by Tom Engelhardt at 8:00am, November 19, 2015.
A Post-Paris “Clash of Civilizations”?
It’s the Islamic State’s Dream and Marco Rubio Agrees
By Tom Engelhardt
Honestly, I don’t know whether to rant or weep, neither of which are usual impulses for me. In the wake of the slaughter in Paris, I have the urge to write one of two sentences here: Paris changed everything; Paris changes nothing. Each is, in its own way, undoubtedly true. And here’s a third sentence I know to be true: This can’t end well.
Other than my hometown, New York, Paris is perhaps the city where I’ve felt most at ease. I’ve never been to Baghdad (where Paris-style Islamic State terror events are relatively commonplace); or Beirut, where they just began; or Syria’s ravaged Aleppo (thank you, Bashar al-Assad of barrel-bomb terror fame); or Mumbai (which experienced an early version of such a terror attack); or Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, now partly destroyed by the U.S.-backed Saudi air force; or Kabul, where Taliban attacks on restaurants have become the norm; or Turkey’s capital, Ankara, where Islamic State suicide bombers recently killed 97 demonstrators at a peace rally. But I have spent time in Paris. And so, as with my own burning, acrid city on September 11, 2001, I find myself particularly repulsed by the barbaric acts of civilian slaughter carried out by three well-trained, well-organized, well-armed suicide teams evidently organized as a first strike force from the hell of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.
The Paris attacks should not, however, be seen primarily as acts of revenge from a distinctly twisted crew, even though one of the murderers reportedly shouted, “You killed our brothers in Syria and now we are here.” Instead, they were clearly acts of calculated provocation meant to reshape our world in grim ways. Worse yet, their effectiveness was pre-guaranteed because, as has been true since 9/11, the leaders of such terror groups, starting with Osama bin Laden, have grasped the dynamics of our world, of what makes us tick and especially what provokes us into our own barbarous acts, so much better than our leaders, our militaries, or our national security states have understood them (or, for that matter, themselves).
Here in a nutshell is what bin Laden grasped before 9/11: with modest millions of dollars and a relatively small number of followers, he and his movement couldn’t hope to create the world of their fervid dreams. If, however, he could lure the planet’s “sole superpower” into stepping into his universe, military first, it would change everything and so do his work for him. And indeed (see: invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq), an operation mounted for an estimated $400,000 to $500,000, using 19 dedicated (mostly Saudi) followers armed only with paper cutters, did just that.
And it’s never stopped since because, just as bin Laden dreamed, Washington helped loose al-Qaeda and its successor outfits from the constraints of a more organized, controlled world. In these last 14 years of failed wars and conflicts of every sort, American military power, aided and abetted by the Saudis, the British, the French, and other countries on a case-by-case basis, essentially fractured the Greater Middle East. It helped create five failed states (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen), worlds in which terror groups could thrive and in the chaos of which they could attract ever more recruits.
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DeleteWiping Out the Gray Zones
Think of the Islamic State and various al-Qaeda crews as having developed (to steal a term from commentator John Feffer) "splinterlands" strategies. To continue to grow, they need the U.S. and its allies to lend them an eternally destructive hand to further smash the worlds around them. So in response to the Paris attacks, French President Francois Hollande’s statement that “we will lead a war which will be pitiless” was just what the terror doctor ordered, as was the growing pressure in Washington for a “big military response” to Paris. The first French reprisal air strikes against IS’s Syrian “capital,” Raqqa, were indeed launched within two days.
All of this is like manna from heaven for the Islamic State, the more “pitiless” the better. After all, that group’s goal, as they write in their magazine and online, is “the extinction of the gray zone” in our world. In other words, they seek the sharpening of distinctions everywhere, which means the opening of abysses where complexity and interaction once existed. Their dream is to live in a black-and-white world of utter religious and political clarity (and calamity), while engaging in what American pundits like to term a “clash of civilizations.” And -- what a joy for the Islamic State! -- Republican presidential candidates are already responding to the Paris attacks, as Marco Rubio did, by calling for just such “a civilizational conflict with radical Islam.” As he put it, “This is not a grievance-based conflict. This is a clash of civilizations... And either they win, or we win.” Jeb Bush similarly responded: “This is an organized effort to destroy Western civilization and we need to lead in this regard.” The answer, of course, is “war.” Various Republican candidates are also now calling for only accepting Syrian Christians as refugees here. You can’t be more black and white than that.
In the European context and with the destruction of those “gray zones” in mind, the Paris attacks should also be considered the Islamic State’s first foray into the politics of the 2017 French presidential campaign. Think of those mass killings as a wholehearted endorsement of the extremist candidate Marine le Pen, whose poll numbers were already on the rise even before the attacks, and her anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant National Front Party. She is now, in effect, IS's chosen candidate, the one most likely to go after gray zones. In the process, of course, pressure on France’s large, increasingly isolated Muslim population will only increase.
Such attacks are guaranteed to put wind in the already billowing sails of far right-wing parties all across Europe. It should, for instance, have come as no surprise that, in the wake of the Paris attacks, Konrad Szymanski, the European affairs minister for Poland’s new far-right government, almost instantly declared his country unlikely to abide by recently negotiated European Union (EU) quotas on accepting refugees from the Greater Middle East. And we’re only going to see more of this in the post-Paris world. With the assistance of IS and other jihadist groups, the elimination of such gray areas in Europe could, in the end, help crack the EU open, while pushing France’s Muslims into an even worse situation, which would, of course, mean more potential recruits for groups like the Islamic State.
The United States, a place where, in the years since 9/11, the danger of being attacked by an Islamic terrorist could be slotted in somewhere between being “shot” by your dog and being shot by a toddler who has found a loaded, unlocked gun in your house, purse, or car. Among the many perils of American life from car crashes to suicide, E. coli illnesses to floods, injuries from crumbling infrastructure to mass killings by non-Islamic lone wolves, Islamic terrorism remains at the bottom of the barrel in the company of other frightening but rare events like shark attacks. Yet the American national security state has essentially been built and funded to protect you from that danger alone.
ReplyDeletePut another way, the officials of that security state have bet the farm on the preeminence of the terrorist “threat,” which has, not so surprisingly, left them eerily reliant on the Islamic State and other such organizations for the perpetuation of their way of life, their career opportunities, their growing powers, and their relative freedom to infringe on basic rights, as well as for that comfortably all-embracing blanket of secrecy that envelops their activities. Note that, as with so many developments in our world which have caught them by surprise, the officials who run our vast surveillance network and its staggering ranks of intelligence operatives and analysts seemingly hadn’t a clue about the IS plot against Paris (even though intelligence officials in at least one other country evidently did). Nonetheless, whether they see actual threats coming or not, they need Paris-style alarms and nightmares, just as they need local “plots,” even ones semi-engineered by FBI informers or created online by lone idiots, not lone wolves. Otherwise, why would the media keep prattling on about terrorism or presidential candidates keep humming the terror tune, and how, then, would public panic levels remain reasonably high on the subject when so many other dangers are more pressing in American life?
The relationship between that ever-more powerful shadow government in Washington and the Islamic terrorists of our planet is both mutually reinforcing and unnervingly incestuous. Both, of course, emerge as winners when the gray zones begin to disappear. When Paris is hit, after all, law enforcement agencies in the U.S. instantly increase their “alert levels”; the CIA director pushes back hard against "hand-wringing over intrusive government spying" and the minimalist restrictions on electronic surveillance put in place in recent years; the FBI heightens “its surveillance of Americans under investigation for apparent ties to the Islamic State”; and, among other things, more police patrols are sent out in major cities, while local law enforcement “vigilance” rises even in places like Niagara Falls, New York. In Los Angeles, post-Paris, extra patrols were typically sent “to ‘critical sites’ and [the city’s police department was] monitoring the ongoing situation, even though it said there were no known threats.”
The lack of obvious threats is, of course, beside the point when American “safety” is at stake! In the meantime, the road toward a more locked-down, secretive, governmentally intrusive, less democratic world is being well paved.
A Dance of Death
ReplyDeleteThink of this as a kind of global danse macabre in which ISIS attacks -- eight committed guys, some possibly trained in combat in Syria or Iraq, with AK-47s, suicide vests, and rental cars -- spread death, chaos, panic, and alarm in our world at next to no cost at all. In response, Washington and its allies engage in a big-budget version of the same, including intensified air campaigns which will, of course, end up taking out civilian targets and infrastructure.
Think of what the U.S. military does when it heads out to destroy those gray zones as the Kobane or Sinjar Strategy. Kobane was a largely Kurdish town on the Turkish border that IS militants besieged and partially took in 2014. They were driven back early this year by the same combination of forces that recently retook the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq: Kurdish fighters and American warplanes. By the time both were retaken, American bombs and Islamic State IEDs and booby-trapped houses had insured that those towns would be largely uninhabitable wrecks, littered with corpses and the skeletons of buildings.
Similarly, plans by the U.S. to intensify the bombing of those Syrian oilfields under the control of the Islamic state (to cut into its supply of funds) reflect a strategy that, whatever its immediate successes, is guaranteed to further wreck the infrastructure of the region. This will help ensure that, no matter what happens to the Islamic State, “Syria” or any state structure like it will be no more. Such acts of destruction, largely from the air, have been taking place across the Greater Middle East since 2001. From Libya to Syria, Iraq to Yemen, the Sinjar Strategy has demonstrably done little to bring success to the U.S. and its allies in their various wars. It has, however, helped create a zone of failed and increasingly fragile states. It has left uprooted populations leading skeletal lives in haunted lands that are also hunting grounds for extremists of every sort. Consider this the dream world of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as well as the perfect breeding ground for yet more extreme nightmares of our age. A dance of death indeed.
As it happens, I’ve barely ranted and not yet wept. If anything, on reaching the end of this piece, I find myself depressed. The future shouldn’t be so easy to see or so repetitively predictable. And it’s a terrible thing to know that, as the gray zones of our planet continue to disappear and wrecked worlds spread, the tempo of that dance of mutual death and destruction stands every chance of speeding up as the "music" only grows louder.
DeleteTom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He is a fellow of the Nation Institute and runs TomDispatch.com. His latest book is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turse’s Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2015 Tom Engelhardt
HOW ABOUT THOSE FREEDOM LOVING REPUBLICANS
DeleteThe dark descension of the Republican party into outright racism and cynically playing off the irrational fears of the public over the Syrian refugee crisis has been worse. We now know the attackers weren’t Syrian and weren’t even refugees. It was a cruel rumor or hoax that one was thought to have come through Europe with a Syrian passport system, but that was cleared up days ago. But in the world of Republican primaries, who cares about facts? …
It doesn’t matter that the US has a robust screening system that has seen over 750,000 refugees come to the United States without incident – the Republican-led House has now voted to grind the already intensive screening process to a virtual halt (they were disgracefully joined by many Democrats). Chris Christie said the US should refuse widows and orphans. Rand Paul introduced a law to bar the entire Muslim world from entering the US as refugees. Donald Trump has suggested he would digitally track every Muslim in the county.
AS THE INTERCEPT’S LEE FANG DOCUMENTED IN DETAIL, THE RHETORIC SPEWING FROM THE MOUTHS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY SOUNDS ALMOST WORD FOR WORD LIKE THE RACISTS DURING WORLD WAR II THAT WANTED THE US TO REFUSE JEWS ON THE BASIS THAT THEY MIGHT BE SECRET NAZIS.
DeleteEven the supposedly establishment Republicans have debased themselves with rhetoric that one can only hope that one day they regret. This video of Jeb Bush struggling to explain why he would create a religious litmus test for refugees and how families are going to “prove” they’re Christian is truly cringeworthy. As Barack Obama said in his admirable condemnation of Bush and others on Tuesday, such talk is “shameful” and “un-American.”
One can say a lot of awful things about Jeb’s brother, George W Bush, including that his disastrous wars that led to the Isis mess we are in now, but he did do one thing right: he was always willing to publicly speak out in favor of the vast majority of Muslims who are peaceful and abhor terrorism just like everyone else. As Chris Hayes noted, not a word of this touching speech Bush gave at an Islamic Center a week after 9/11 would ever be uttered by any of the Republican candidates today. Instead they compete over who can disparage and debase the Muslim community with the broadest brush stroke.
There are plenty of questions to ask in the aftermath of the attacks to learn how terrorism can better be prevented in the future. Instead public discourse has veered so far off-course that it’s hard to see when it will return.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/20/paris-attacks-political-agenda-immigration-encryption-surveillence?CMP=share_btn_tw
DeleteThe seeds of ISIS were planted in Iraq when its parent organization, al-Qaeda in Iraq, though battered, survived “the surge” of U.S. ground forces into the country beginning in 2007—the final and tactically most successful phase of the counterinsurgency campaign, which at its peak involved some 170,000 U.S. troops. Al-Qaeda in Iraq itself was born from the American occupation; a new occupation would produce the same kind of resistance, which ISIS or some other group could exploit.
ReplyDelete...The ISIS franchise in Libya seems to have arisen from the anarchy introduced in that country by NATO’s destruction of the Qaddafi regime and the utter failure to plan for its replacement. Because these and similar groups are so deeply embedded in local struggles, destruction of ISIS “central”—that is, the pseudo-state led by the self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that currently governs parts of Syria and Iraq—cannot eliminate them. The reverse might be helpful, however. For example, if President Sisi were to pursue more moderate policies in Egypt, he might create a less supportive political environment for ISIS.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/11/isis-syria-iraq-containment/416799/
Muslim Marine Masterfully Bashes Trump by Posting His Military ID Badge: ‘Where’s Yours?’
ReplyDeleteTrump never served in the military, deferring his draft call-up four times during the Vietnam War.
Republican presidential candidate and bombastic billionaire Donald Trump this week refused to rule out placing U.S. Muslims in a database and requiring them to carry special identification.
Sergeant Tayyib Rashid, a veteran of the Marine Corps, took exception to those comments and challenged Trump, posting a picture of his military ID on Twitter with the words, “I’m an American Muslim and I already carry a special ID badge. Where’s yours?”
Rufus posted this on the previous post. I added some context.
DeleteBrussels has been put into security lockdown after Belgian intelligence received 'precise information' of a planned Paris-style ISIS attack in the capital.
ReplyDeleteBelgium’s prime minister Charles Michel confirmed that the decision to raise the terror alert level in Brussels was taken 'based on quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris.'
Service has been halted on the Brussels subway system and heavily armed police and soldiers are patrolling the Belgian capital amid a high security alert.
The country's national security center has raised the terror threat level to Level four after fears of a 'serious and imminent' terror threat involving 'weapons and explosives'.
.
ReplyDeleteThe main points in the video and the Englehardt article above have been made by some on this blog for years. Yet, even given that, I never expected to live to see the day when a presidential candidate would suggest a portion of our people be listed and tracked by the government. Or, worse yet, that he could be leading the polls of one of the major parties. It's like some bizarre dystopic novel.
The have won. OBL, in his wildest wet dreams dreams, couldn't have imagined how successful one attack would be on what was at the time the only hyper-power in the world. FDR said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself". Bush said, "I think we agree, the past is over." Who would suspect they would both be so right.
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Well, thankfully, it's not the muslims we have to worry about -
ReplyDeleteNovember 21, 2015
Hillary Clinton disqualifies herself as commander-in-chief
By Trevor Thomas
As if we need even more evidence, yesterday Hillary again proved herself incompetent when it comes to dealing with issues of national security, radical Islam, and even Islam in general. In a campaign speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, Clinton went to near comical lengths to avoid mentioning "Islam" with "terror" or "terrorism."
"Let’s be clear," Clinton said: "Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people, and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism." .........................
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/11/hillary_clinton_disqualifies_herself_as_commanderinchief.html
--- it's not the muslims we have to worry about, except the ones newly elected to the city council in Hamtramck, Michigan who have it in mind to
First we show the Poles, then everybody else
It's not muslims, either, who chant in the streets of Iran, (at government orders), "Death To America" "Death To Israel" "Death To France"
DeleteIt's somebody else, not muslims, according to Hillary.
And the recent attacks in France had nothing to do with Islam, either, according to Hillary.
You can see how the average muslim feels about the attacks in France by the outpouring of condemnation of them by muslims worldwide.
DeleteWhy, 30 (thirty) muslims even protested against the attacks in France.....
And here in USA ?
Overwhelming protests against the attacks everywhere, probably in your own community.....
If you haven't heard about all the muslim protests in USA against the attacks, it's because our Jewish controlled media has blacked the subject out.....
DeleteISIS - Islamic State Iraq/Syria - doesn't have anything to do with Islam or muslims either.
DeleteDon't let the Republicans tell you that it does, and fool you.
Believe Hillary, she never lies.
It was the US and Britain that killed Iran, Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson.
DeleteThe "Freedom Loving West" deposed the elected government and imposed a despot upon the people of Iran.
Killing the country, when they did.
The people of Iran merely wish the same for US.
Can't find when the Idaho/Auburn game starts.....TBA it says on the schedule....
ReplyDeletePlease don’t post your play by play. No one gives a crap about your vandals or elks. Take it over to your pal’e site. He needs some comments.
ReplyDeleteOh, I forgot, he screens all comments before posting them and then comes over to bitch that I delete about 2% of his for cause.
OKyDokY
ReplyDeleteI'll just put up the final score.
How do you know no one is interested ?
My vote is: I'm not the least bit interested. In fact, I find it annoying.
ReplyDeleteI find everything about you annoying.
DeleteAnyway, I've bowed to Deuce's request.
It's not a Sports Bar now.
DeleteJust endless political arguments.
DeleteI find everything about you annoying, including the fact you don't pay your legally due internet betting debts.
Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson stole his auntie's identity, ran up thousands in loans that he refused to pay ...
DeleteHe is the pot calling the kettle black.
ReplyDeleteHow the crazy Trump Muslim database story got started
By Byron York (@ByronYork) • 11/20/15 6:59 PM
That was it. With the scoop in hand, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow jumped into action, sending an inquiry to the Trump campaign: "Would Mr. Trump rule out a database of American Muslims, or would he consider that? And would he rule out having them carry a form of ID that notes their religion, or would he consider that?"
Maddow did not hear back from Trump, but after an event in Iowa, an MSNBC reporter asked a clearly distracted Trump on a ropeline, "Should there be a database system that tracks Muslims here in this country?" Trump again beat around the bush, but later in the interview ended up agreeing. In another brief encounter around the same time, with CNN, Trump noted that he had never said anything about a database in the Yahoo interview and declined to engage on the issue.
Trump's offhand decision to tell MSNBC he would implement a database was an enormously stupid thing to do. And by Friday afternoon, Trump tweeted, "I didn't suggest a database -- a reporter did. We must defeat Islamic terrorism & have surveillance, including a watch list, to protect America."
But the damage had been done. In the end, the responsibility is always the candidate's to be on guard for attempts, by journalists or rival campaign operatives, to entice him into saying damaging things. Sometimes those are attempts to create a story out of nothing. The Muslim database affair seems a particularly audacious example of that.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/how-the-crazy-trump-muslim-database-story-got-started/article/2576891
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DeleteBut the damage had been done. In the end, the responsibility is always the candidate's to be on guard for attempts, by journalists or rival campaign operatives, to entice him into saying damaging things. Sometimes those are attempts to create a story out of nothing. The Muslim database affair seems a particularly audacious example of that.
Bullshit.
The question is so outrageous, Trump should have Immediately answered with, "Are you nutz? The very idea is against everything we stand for as a free and democratic nation. The idea is absurd. It is disgusting."
...with CNN, Trump noted that he had never said anything about a database in the Yahoo interview and declined to engage on the issue.
Never said anything? Who answered the friggin question Mr. Trump?
He proves himself an idiot and a bigot and then doesn't have the balls to either admit it or apologize and say he was wrong. The leader in the GOP nominating process is a complete dick. Worse, he is the leader in the GOP nominating process with less than a year to run until the election.
.
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The very definition of a self-centered, out of touch hick: to think that the readers of an International blog would be the least bit interested in the foibles of his local, inept sports team. It induces vertigo.
ReplyDelete:)
Delete'an International blog'
heh
How do you know there aren't any V fans out there ?
I can feel the disappointment worldwide, myself.
You take yourself and this place too seriously, swamp hick.
Deuce has posted the IP addresses of many readers from other countries,
Deleteon the other hand, No One has ever expressed the slightest interest in Idaho football teams.
The only interesting thing about the Vandals football program is that the draft dodger, Robert Peterson, finds the dreadful collegiate athletic program of interest.
DeleteAs for the rest of the US, George S. Patton described our feelings ...
"America loves a winner, and will not tolerate a loser ..."
Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson not only tolerates a loser, he celebrates them.
Carson loses Iowa conservatives; Shift to Cruz...............Drudge
ReplyDeleteI'm reluctantly concluding my guy isn't going to make it.
Ben, admittedly, hasn't quite mastered foreign policy yet, thinking the Chinese were in the middle east. They are commercially but he was thinking militarily, so it seemed.
DeleteBut then of course Obama has made a total mess of it, so he couldn't be any worse than that.
Wonderful. What could possibly go wrong?
DeleteThe Muslim Brotherhood was soundly defeated, in Egypt, by the policies that the US has engaged in while Mr Obama has been President. That our draft dodger has displayed far less understanding of US foreign policy than has Dr Carson.
Delete... par for the course
DeleteYou've said we must destroy ISIS. What do you suggest ?
ReplyDelete************
November 21, 2015
Americans slaughtered in recent Islamic terror attacks around the world
By Carol Brown
Just one week ago, an American was murdered by Muslim terrorists in Paris. The victim’s name was Nohemi Gonzalez. She was a 23-year-old college student spending a semester studying abroad. She lost her life because some devout Muslims acted on the teachings of the Quran. And so she was slaughtered in a barrage of bullets.
Two other Americans suffered leg injuries in the attacks. At least one of them required surgery.
A few days after the Paris attacks, another American was murdered by jihadists when a “Palestinian” terrorist set out to shoot as many people as possible in the West Bank. In the line of fire was American Ezra Schwartz, who was studying in Israel for a year. The young man was gunned down as he set out to deliver food to Israeli soldiers.
Then on Friday, an American in Mali working on development projects, Anita Datar, was killed during an Islamic terror attack. A Peace Corps veteran, Ms. Datar was mourned by her brother:
Anita was one of the kindest and most generous people we know. She loved her family and her work tremendously. Everything she did in her life she did to help others — as a mother, public health expert, daughter, sister and friend.
Where is the outrage? And more importantly, where is the action?
War has been declared against us and is being waged with ruthless savagery. In the face of this, the president and the entire Democratic Party are staging an all-out PR battle to convince Americans that this has nothing to do with Islam as they put their best foot forward to weaken our national security and frame us as responsible for these barbaric attacks. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for a small sampling.)
If people with access to the bullhorn have never read the Quran and know nothing about its teachings, they need to shut up and learn. And if they don’t want to learn, then they just need to shut up.
Let each and every one of us educate the clueless, ever mindful of the fact that the Quran is not written in chronological order and that Chapter 2, Verse 106 (abrogation) forces the bellicose Medina verses to replace or override the earlier peaceful verses written in Mecca. The result is a totalitarian doctrine that mandates world domination.
Spread the word. (Consider buying The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, by Robert Spencer, as a Christmas gift.)
Hat tips: CBS, Fox News, Reuters, The Right Scoop, Breitbart, Counterjihad Report, Atlas Shrugs
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/11/americans_slaughtered_in_recent_islamic_terror_attacks_around_the_world.html
about 30-40% of our traffic comes from overseas on some posts. Israel monitors us 24/7
ReplyDelete" Israel monitors us 24/7"
ReplyDeleteReally ?
I'd like to say hello to the good people of Israel and I wish you all well.
Even the 40% of the people, there in lands controlled by Israel, that are Muslims?
Delete
ReplyDeleteWar Room
Former Obama Terrorism Adviser: Change Your Strategy, Mr. President
America’s preeminent counterterrorism official says ISIL can be defeated only if we treat it like the Taliban in 2001.
By Michael Vickers
November 20, 2015
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One of the duties of a senior policy adviser is to tell the president when his strategy isn’t working. By any measure, our strategy in Iraq and Syria is not succeeding, or is not succeeding fast enough. We are playing a long game, when a more rapid and disruptive strategy is required. In my role as a senior counterterrorism adviser to both Presidents Bush and Obama, I played a major role in our counterterrorism campaigns against Al Qaeda, and in the Osama bin Laden raid; earlier, I was the principal strategist for the covert war in Afghanistan against the Soviets. Were I still in government, this is some of what I would say.
First, time is not on our side. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is not just a regional insurgent army. It is a terrorist group with global reach and the leader of global jihad. We cannot rely on intelligence to disrupt all plots, and ISIL cannot be contained any more than Al Qaeda could prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The flow of Western passport holders in and out of Syria and the sanctuary ISIL enjoys there to train operatives and plan attacks is a clear and present danger. ISIL must be disrupted, dismantled and defeated. Whatever we would do if ISIL made good on its threat to attack Washington, D.C. and New York, we should instead do now, before the attack occurs.
Second, we need a “Syria-first” strategy to replace the Iraq-first strategy we’ve been pursuing. So far, two-thirds of coalition airstrikes have been in Iraq, as have the bulk of our capacity building efforts. But it’s now clear that the threat in Iraq is local, while in Syria, it’s global. It’s Syria where ISIL has its principal sanctuary, and that’s where the battle for the future of the Middle East is now taking place.
Third, we need a strategy that draws its inspiration from President Bush’s 2001 Afghanistan campaign and President Reagan’s Afghanistan strategy in the 1980s. ISIL, as its name implies, is a de facto state. It holds territory, controls population, and funds its operations from resources that it exploits on territory it controls. If there’s one thing the American military knows how to do it is defeating an opposing force trying to hold ground.
It took us two months in late 2001 to overthrow the Taliban/Al Qaeda regime in Afghanistan. The reasons for our success in 2001 and our lack of success in 2014-15 are twofold: a far more intense air campaign and an indigenous ground force, led by Special Operations and CIA advisers, that could rapidly exploit the effects of air power. We conducted as many airstrikes in two months in Afghanistan in 2001 as we have in 16 months in Iraq and Syria. We should increase our strike tempo and weight of attacks significantly to bring both mass and precision to bear on ISIL’s stronghold.
DeleteAirstrikes are not enough, however. We must leverage the moderate Syrian opposition—and they do exist in the tens of thousands—to dislodge ISIL and Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, from their territory. As we did in Afghanistan, we must support the moderate opposition with overwhelming air power, substantially increase the flow of arms to the moderate opposition, and place special operations and intelligence advisers with them. With American assistance, a much smaller insurgent force defeated the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. With our many Sunni partners, we can do the same in Syria.
Dislodging ISIL and Al Qaeda from Syria does not mean, moreover, that U.S. forces have to occupy and try to pacify the country afterward. As we should have learned, that does not play to our strengths. There are a lot of operational options between what we did in Iraq and what we didn’t do in Libya.
Fourth, we must not succumb to the false hope that ending the Syrian civil war is the key to defeating ISIL, and that we should join forces with Russia (and Bashar Assad) to do it. The only winners in that case will be Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The war will not end, and we will further alienate our Sunni allies and risk greater instability in the Middle East.
Assad must go for the conflict to end. He is a greater magnet for global jihad than U.S. forces were in Iraq at the height of the insurgency. To effect a political transition in Syrian, we must keep the pressure on Assad, much as Reagan did in Afghanistan in the 1980s while he was negotiating with Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev on a range of important issues. Abandoning our counter-Assad strategy would fatally undermine our Syria effort, and would have repercussions far beyond Syria.
DeleteRussia intervened only because Assad was in trouble. We are on offense and the Russians, Iranians and the Syrian regime are on defense. Why we would bail out the Russians and Iranians from their Syrian misadventure is beyond me. Putin will certainly extract a price for any cooperation. We should not forget his invasion of Ukraine and his desire to overthrow the European order. Russian air power, moreover, adds very little to what the U.S. can bring to bear. Russia is a marginal force in Syria. We defeated a far more powerful Russian army in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and we can defeat their effort now to keep Assad in power.
Fifth, a more intense application of air power and combat advisers will go a long way in Iraq as well. Our Iraq problem is fundamentally political, but whatever Iraq’s political future, ISIL cannot be allowed to maintain sanctuaries there. The Sunni tribes will not revolt without decisive U.S. engagement, and severing the main lines of communication between Syria and Iraq will isolate ISIL’s forces in Iraq.
Finally, we must take the fight to ISIL’s affiliates, particularly in Libya, Egypt and Nigeria. And we must not let up on Al Qaeda. The world’s most dangerous bomb-maker is still plotting in Yemen, and Al Qaeda is strengthening its position in Afghanistan.
An Afghanistan-style campaign in Syria won’t bring our conflict with ISIL to an end, but it will deprive the group of its state and its key sanctuary. And it will buy us time and improved homeland security.
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Michael Vickers, a former Special Forces and CIA operations officer, was Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, 2011-2015 and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Low Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities, 2007-2011. He was the principal strategist for the largest and most successful covert action program in CIA’s history, the defeat of the Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/obama-isis-strategy-afghanistan-war-213380#ixzz3sAoIWY7T
One man's suggestion as to what to do.
But the Taliban was not defeated ...
DeleteISIS is al-Qeada, the policy followed in 2001, an abject failure.
That a draft dodger advocates for the replication of that military failure, beyond strange.
Why should the US spend another trillion dollars, lose another 10,000 of our soldiers, to provide no observable gain.
DeleteWhile the Obama policies have soundly defeated radical Islam in Egypt, the most important of the US client states in the region.
Only local forces can eliminate the threat posed by radical Islam.
DeleteThe US has shown, conclusively, that its ground forces cannot get 'er done.
Good old Mike:
DeleteFrom 1973 to 1986, Michael Vickers served as an Army Special Forces sergeant, later as a commissioned officer, and CIA paramilitary operations officer. In the mid-1980s, Vickers became involved with Operation Cyclone, the CIA program to arm Islamist Mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. What could possibly go wrong?
He was the head military strategist for the US, coordinating an effort that involved ten countries and providing direction to forces made up of over 500,000 Afghan fighters.[6] Later he was Senior Vice President, Strategic Studies, at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), during which he provided advice on Iraq strategy to US President George H.W. Bush and his war cabinet. What could possibly go wrong?
If the US really wanted to defeat the Islamic State, it would be supporting the legitimate government of Syria, that of President Assad.
ReplyDeleteThe very idea that Assad must go, because the jihadists are drawn to fight his government, really a bizarre position.
DeleteOne that advocates for giving the jihadists what they want, the elimination of a non-Islamic regime in the Middle East.
Just what the Muslim Brotherhood has wanted for decades.
Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson now posting support for a policy of appeasement towards the Islamic State.
..and Hezbollah
DeleteThe only mistake Assad made was his response to the initial uprising was slow and weak. It was never just an internal uprising as it was a result of the US following Israel’s foreign policy instead of our own. It was never any of our business.
DeleteAuburn 56
ReplyDeleteIdaho 34
We gained more yards, had more first downs, but a lot more turnovers.
Texas State and the suffering is over for this year, Vandal Fans !
No will, no way -
ReplyDeleteU.S. presses Iraqi army to get on with Ramadi offensive
Jim Michaels, USA TODAY 2:12 p.m. EST November 19, 2015
EPA IRAQ RAMADI OFFENISVE WAR CONFLICTS (GENERAL) IRQ
(Photo: European Pressphoto Agency)
46 CONNECTTWEETLINKEDIN 10 COMMENTEMAILMORE
Sounding a new note of urgency, the U.S.-led coalition combating the Islamic State is pressing Iraq’s armed forces to launch a final assault to recapture the key city of Ramadi, a campaign entering its sixth month with only limited progress.
“It's time for the Iraqis to … make this final move,” said Col. Steve Warren, the coalition military spokesman in Iraq.
The remarks reflect a change in the Pentagon's public comments about the offensive. Pentagon officials had earlier said the offensive had not stalled and emphasized the complexity of the battle. But now that the Pentagon has provided the assistance Iraq's armed forces had requested to retake the city, it is stepping up pressure on Iraq to move ahead against the militants holed up in the city, 80 miles west of Baghdad.
Warren said the coalition has provided enough air power, training and other support to launch a successful offensive against the heavily outnumbered Islamic State fighters, who seized the city in May. “All the pieces are in place,” Warren said.
The pressure from the U.S. military comes as the Islamic State has pressed attacks around the world, including Friday's terror attacks in Paris, twin bombings in Beirut on Nov. 12 and the downing of a Russian airliner over Egypt on Oct. 31. The extremist group claimed it was behind all incidents, which caused nearly 400 deaths overall.
Since those attacks, France and Russia have stepped up bombing raids on Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria, but the militants do not appear to have suffered significant casualties, highlighting the limited impact of airstrikes that are not backed up by ground forces.
DeleteThe prolonged battle for Ramadi underscores the need for an effective force of combat troops, which the Iraqi military is struggling to field. The U.S. strategy is to rely on local forces in Iraq and Syria because President Obama has ruled out sending U.S. troops for ground combat.
The coalition has backed up Iraq's military with more than 190 strikes along the Euphrates River Valley, which includes Ramadi, over the past month. The U.S. military also has provided training and equipment to breach minefields around the city.
A force of about 10,000 Iraqi troops has surrounded Ramadi and has closed in on the city center. An estimated 600 to 1,000 militants are inside the city, where they have established elaborate defenses using roadside bombs and other obstacles.
Iraqi forces have met stiff resistance as they tried to breach the defenses despite their numerical advantage. “When that point to that spear gets blunted against some stiff resistance, it could ... stop all the rest,” Warren said. “That's the case here.”
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has made the recapture of Ramadi a key part of the U.S. strategy to defeat the Islamic State. But dependence on Iraq's military is proving challenging. The armed forces collapsed when the militants swept into Iraq from Syria last year, and have been slow to recover.
Much of the military success against the extremist group since then has been achieved by Kurdish forces in northern Iraq and, to a lesser degree, by Shiite militias, two groups that have so far displayed a greater willingness to fight. This month, Kurdish forces aided by coalition airstrikes pushed the militants out of Sinjar in northern Iraq and cut a major Islamic State supply line linking Syria and Iraq.
Capturing a much larger city like Ramadi requires the country’s armed forces because they have the firepower needed for such an ambitious campaign.
Iraq’s forces, however, have been weakened by conflicts among Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in the country, which has resulted in a military of competing interests and has undermined loyalty toward the Shiite-dominated central government.
The result is a fighting force with low morale, said Ben Connable, a senior analyst at RAND Corp. and a retired Marine Corps intelligence officer. “War is a contest of two opposing sides and one side doesn’t have a will.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/11/19/impatient-us-presses-iraqi-army-get-offensive-retake-ramadi/76045724/
What could possibly go wrong?
DeleteWell, one can hardly blame them. They Shia don't seem to like the idea of dying to secure a city that is 90% or so Sunni.
DeleteIf ISIS wasn't so incredibly brutal and insane they could have their autonomous area and prosper.
They are turning everyone against themselves.
WASHINGTON, November 21, 2015 — U.S. and coalition military forces have continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.
ReplyDeleteOfficials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.
Strikes in Syria
Attack, ground-attack, fighter, bomber and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 22 strikes in Syria:
-- Near Abu Kamal, one strike struck an ISIL crude oil collection point.
-- Near Al Hasakah, four strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL building, an ISIL car bomb, and four ISIL vehicles.
-- Near Al Hawl, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units.
-- Near Ar Raqqah, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL checkpoint.
-- Near Dayr Ar Zawr, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL vehicles.
-- Near Mar'a, 13 strikes struck 12 separate ISIL tactical units and an ISIL headquarters, destroying four ISIL fighting positions, three ISIL buildings, an ISIL heavy machine gun, an ISIL staging area, damaged an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL building, and wounded an ISIL fighter.
Strikes in Iraq
Bomber, attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 20 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:
-- Near Albu Hayat, one strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed three ISIL buildings.
-- Near Bayji, one strike destroyed an ISIL tactical vehicle.
-- Near Kisik, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position, an ISIL vehicle, and suppressed an ISIL mortar position.
-- Near Mosul, four strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed five ISIL fighting positions, three ISIL heavy machine guns, an ISIL bunker, and an ISIL vehicle.
-- Near Qayyarah, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL weapons cache and three ISIL fighting positions.
-- Near Ramadi, six strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL command and control facility, 15 ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL buildings, five ISIL heavy machine guns, an ISIL recoilless rifle, an ISIL mortar system, an ISIL IED facility, an ISIL resupply warehouse, and denied ISIL access to terrain.
-- Near Sinjar, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun, an ISIL fighting position, and an ISIL checkpoint.
-- Near Sultan Abdallah, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas.
This last week that I've been posting these, the coalition is getting real bizzy in Ramadi.
DeleteDefinition of a ‘Strike’
A strike, as defined in the CJTF releases, means one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect for that location.
So, the officials said, having a single aircraft deliver a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike. Multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, with the cumulative effect of making that facility [or facilities] harder or impossible to use is also considered a single strike, task force officials said.
Accordingly, CJTF-OIR does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in each strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.
Gettin' Bizzy
Posted for the edification of literate people that might be interested in what our government says it is doing.
DeleteIt's understood that there might be too many polysyllabic words, and numbers for hick English Majors from certain Western states.
You had ISIS being defeated, cleared totally out of Iraq, this past 4th of July.
ReplyDeleteNo one listens to you anymore.
AP just called the Louisiana Governor's race for the Democrat, John Bel Edwards.
ReplyDeleteJohn Kerry runs his mouth more thoughtlessly than The Donald -
ReplyDeleteThe real clash of civilisation is in the West’s attitude to terror
A great deal was revealed by the different reactions to Paris of our PM and the US Secretary of State
Charles Moore
By Charles Moore
6:49PM GMT 20 Nov 2015
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Comments2566 Comments
On Monday, David Cameron said that “it is not good enough to say simply that Islam is a religion of peace and then to deny any connection between the religion of Islam and the extremists”. The following day, the US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in Paris, was asked about the murderous attacks in that city the previous Friday. Mr Kerry said: “There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo (the slaughter of the staff of the “blasphemous” French satirical magazine in January), and I think everybody would feel that. There was a sort of particularised focus (to the Charlie Hebdo attack) and perhaps even a legitimacy – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, OK, they’re really angry because of this and that.”
"There is something wrong with a rights-based culture much more obsessed with catering for difference than with bolstering our common freedoms which really matter"
In these two remarks are contained differing beliefs about our civilisation. The argument about how the West should deal with Islamist terror and extremism turns on the difference. If Mr Kerry’s side wins, our civilisation will lose.
Mr Cameron was trying to state that membership of our civilisation has a price which every citizen must pay. Mr Kerry was saying (though he half-realised he shouldn’t be saying it) that grievance and anger against Western society felt by a group can sort of justify violence. The Friday night attacks, he went on, had “nothing to do with Islam”, but were just “criminality” and “psychopathism”. His Charlie Hebdo comparison implied that, if they had been to do with Islam, they would have had near-legitimacy.
Mr Kerry is factually wrong, of course, in stating that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam. I discussed it at lunch in London with a friend who knows a lot about terrorism. “Look,” he said, “If you now stand up in this crowded restaurant and shout 'Allahu Akbhar’, everyone will dive under the table.” We agreed, and added, that if I were to jump up and shout “Jesus Christ is Lord”, people would merely pause, look embarrassed and then go on eating. In the current state of the two religions (both of which have pasts stained by extreme violence), one is dramatically more belligerent than the other. Muslims shouted “Allahu Akbhar!” as they ran, firing their guns, into the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali.
But the key point for political leaders is not to debate theology which they may not (and need not) understand. It is to defend effectively the civilisation of which they are an important part.
DeleteIn our Western politics, there is plenty of common ground about what our civilisation consists in – freedom of speech and religion, the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, accountable institutions, independent universities, habits of tolerance. No one could win a general election in most Western countries who did not, more or less, think along these lines. The Left would put more emphasis on equality and the Right on opportunity, but there is not a massive difference between the mainstream on either side about what, day to day, our civilisation should look like.
Where there is a massive difference is about how civilisation can be sustained. This arises from a difference about what where it starts. On the one hand are those who think it rests on universal values, often as proclaimed in written declarations of rights. On the other hand are those who think it arises from history, and is developed by particular people in particular ways at particular times.
If you are on the universalist side, you feel guilty about any bad deed done in the Western past and you get terribly worried by anything which deviates from the general rule. If civilisation is built on innate, global human rights, those rights must be upheld for all people at all times, almost regardless of circumstances. So if, for example, an Islamist extremist might conceivably face torture if deported to his country of origin, he must not be deported, whatever the expense of keeping him here and whatever his danger to our public good.
The particularists think differently. They are equally opposed to torture, but they are prouder of their history and have a much stronger sense that the freedoms and rights they value do not exist in a vacuum, but because of their countries’ past achievements. Those freedoms and rights flow from citizenship and are protected by an enforceable judicial and political authority, usually a national one. So if a case arises in which the liberty and security of the particularist’s fellow citizens are threatened by the rights of a non-citizen, the particularist sides heavily with his fellow citizens. And if some of his fellow citizens choose to spit on their common citizenship – for example, by attacking people who serve in the armed forces, or by demanding their own courts – his patience will not be endless.
If you ask the universalists why Britain became a parliamentary democracy with the rule of law, they will say that it was because enlightened people spread the right ideas. The particularist won’t disagree, but he would add that other, tougher things played a role – the Royal Navy, for instance, and a minimum of 22 miles of sea between us and any other country. He knows that nothing worth having can survive undefended.
Delete"It is an unfeasibly expensive First World luxury to pretend that the entire baroque panoply of European Human Rights can be completely unaffected by the Paris attacks"
In the current debate about migration, the universalists will say that an end to the Schengen agreement or a limitation of the rights of refugees would be an appalling affront to our values and “just what the terrorists want”. The particularists will say: “If Europe lets in millions of people unvetted, several thousand of them will be Islamists who will try to kill us, so we shouldn’t.”
My children’s generation have a phrase which I like. “That’s a First World problem,” they will say, meaning a problem which it is a luxury to have – “Oh dear, we haven’t got room to build a second garage” or “I have to go ten miles to find organic sun-dried tomatoes.”
There is a sense in which universalists, though they think they speak for all mankind, suffer from First World problems. It is reported, for instance, that Mr Speaker Bercow wants transgender lavatories in the House of Commons. It is increasingly common in government buildings for prayer-rooms to be provided for the benefit (though this is not stated) of Muslim staff. These are not exactly bad developments – a place where everyone can pray could help stressed workers – but there is something wrong with a rights-based culture much more obsessed with catering for difference than with bolstering our common freedoms which really matter.
For the past 200 years and more, our country has not (with the exception of IRA supporters) contained significant numbers of people dedicated to preaching hatred of its way of life and violence against its people. Today, it does, and so does almost every country in the Western world. It is an unfeasibly expensive First World luxury to pretend that the entire baroque panoply of European Human Rights can be completely unaffected by this change.
Unless that pretence is dropped, peaceful citizens of all Western countries will – to steal Mr Kerry’s phrase about extremists – “be really angry because of this and that”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12008690/The-real-clash-of-civilisation-is-inthe-Wests-attitude-to-terror.html
Your time is up, Quirk-O.
ReplyDeleteFirst we show the Poles, then everybody else
Time to move on.......
November 22, 2015
Would liberals mind living next to mosques?
By Ed Straker
Hamtramck, Michigan has a majority-Muslim city council, so businesses find it impossible to get a liquor license within 500 feet of a mosque. But what disturbs residents the most are the calls to prayers, five times a day, starting at 6 AM................
"The Polish people think we were invading them," said Masud Khan, one of the mosque's leaders, recalling that time in an interview earlier this month. "We were a big threat to their religion and culture. Now their days are gone."
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/11/would_liberals_mind_living_next_to_mosques.html
The Poles of Hamtramck need to hire a good lawyer, maybe Alan Dershowitz, to sue Hamtramck on the grounds that damn noise five times a day is 'establishing a religion', and mandate a noise ordinance.
DeleteIt's not about diversity. It's about conquest.
DeleteNow, of course, some churches have bells that they ring. But they don't ring them at 6 AM. And they don't amplify them from speakers on the roof. And the ringing of bells is fundamentally different from the call to prayer, which, in and of itself, is a prayer. If you listen to one, you will hear someone wailing in Arabic. What has America become when we are forced to hear prayers, in a foreign language, while walking the streets of our home towns?
This is not what the founding fathers meant when they enacted the First Amendment. Americans should not be forced to listen to prayers of other religions. This is religious oppression. If a church were doing this, liberals would be up and arms. But because mosques are doing this, liberals are silent.
Most American Muslims are not terrorists. But some American Muslims are trying to push their culture on us in an oppressive way that no other religion has ever been permitted to. Besides the security concerns, it's something else we need to think about when admitting more Muslims into the country.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIf the US wants to defeat ISIS, it first has to defeat Aipac, the Neocons and end Saudi support for the enemies of ISIS.
DeleteIt has to stop the crap, that Israel is a vital ally. Israel is no such thing. 14 years of the US fighting on the side of Israel’s foreign policy ambitions has been the single worst foreign policy decision since Woodrow Wilson involved the US in WW1.
There is no winning, no vital interests and no benefit supporting Israel.
Ignoring and fighting against motivated and capable Islamic forces opposed to ISIS because Israel prefers and demands that we do so is insane, suicidal and treasonous to US interests.
The Kurds, Iran, the legitimate army of Syria, Hezbollah, Shia militias of Iraq and Iran, backed by Russia, provide the base for a victory against ISIS. Until that is understood by the clueless in Washington, our policy of support for Israel and Saudi Arabia, our insane overseas military web and the inability of our corrupt power sluts in Washington to control themselves will wreck and ruin us.
The first step to defeating ISIS is to end support for Saudi Arabia and remove political cover for Israel. Ending the US habit of providing Israel the UN Security Council veto and ending US military ties , will do more to encourage the Islamic coalition to defeat ISIS than any amount of bombing.
JUST SAY NO
ReplyDeleteSecretary of State John Kerry will meet next week with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the region to try to stop ongoing violence, although a senior US official insisted on Saturday the visit was not a renewed effort to broker a peace accord.
The State Department said Kerry would travel to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Ramallah on a trip that will also include a stop in the United Arab Emirates to discuss the Syrian conflict.
Kerry last met Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Berlin in October, to try to end a spate of bloodshed and stop what Washington regarded as provocative statements by Israeli and Palestinian leaders over the management of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque.
Just send Lard Ass a note:
DeleteDear Bibi
Your check is not in the mail, and your Veto Card has expired.
Have a nice day.
Barack :)