Boardman writes: "ISIS regularly sends out multilingual messages of doom and
destruction to the rest of the world, but especially to "the infidel West,"
which includes the already terrified US. None of the US options are
particularly attractive, none are likely to be decisive, and any of them,
even if taken independently, remain dependent on others for their eventual
usefulness."
The aftermath of an ISIS car bomb attack. (photo: Wissm al-Okili/Reuters)
Notes on the Islamic Quagmires (Yes, Plural)
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
24 January 16
US options in dealing with Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, etc.)
In the abstract, the US has four broad options for dealing with the Islamic
State (ISIS), which now more or less controls most of eastern Syria and
northern Iraq, much of it uninhabitable. From this base, ISIS regularly
sends out multilingual messages of doom and destruction to the rest of the
world, but especially to "the infidel West," which includes the already
terrified US. None of the US options are particularly attractive, none are
likely to be decisive, and any of them, even if taken independently, remain
dependent on others for their eventual usefulness.
The US and all the other players in the region are currently engaged in what
the Pentagon has called "a tactical stalemate" in and around the
self-declared ISIS caliphate that stretches like a web across some 12,000
square miles of Syria and Iraq, primarily along the great river valleys of
the Tigris and Euphrates, but also across acres of almost empty desert.
Taking the ISIS caliphate as the primary quagmire, the basic US options
going forward are: (1) invasion/occupation, (2) escalation, (3) maintaining
the stalemate, or (4) disengagement/withdrawal.
(1) Massive invasion, long occupation of the middle of the Middle East
Clearly some Republican presidential candidates and others on the right are
making noises that seem to call for just such overwhelming US force in a
region where no one anymore believes we would be greeted as liberators. But
invasion is far from a popular idea, and invasion with American troops is
probably off the table for a year or so, if not more. With no boots on the
ground, an occupation is not happening.
But a massive invasion, by the Kurds, say, with overwhelming American air
power in support - that seems more plausible. There are lots of Kurdish
fighters, called peshmerga in Iraq, where there are 80,000 to 250,000
according to unreliable estimates. There are also semi-independent Kurdish
military forces in Iran, Turkey, and Syria.
The Kurds in Syria and Iraq have effectively stood their ground against
ISIS, or pushed it back, despite being under-supplied by their supposed
allies. In Iraq, the US won't supply weapons to the peshmerga directly, only
through the Baghdad government, which doesn't want to see the Kurds get too
strong, especially while the Iraqi army remains over-matched against ISIS
(the pyrrhic victory in Ramadi left the former city of 400,000 largely
depopulated and in ruins).
A massive invasion including the Turks is a theoretical possibility, since
the Turks have the second largest army in the region (largest is Iran, third
is Egypt), but the Turks have spent the last few years helping ISIS more
than fighting it, as Turkey drifts ever further toward becoming an Islamic
state under President Erdogan. Besides, Turkey has already committed major
military forces to fighting the Kurds in eastern Turkey and occasionally
bombing the Kurds in Syria.
The Syrian government is already fighting ISIS in Syria, but not that
aggressively, since the greater threat comes from 33 Syrian rebel factions.
The Russian intervention on the side of the Syrian government seems to have
stabilized western Syria somewhat, but the Russians are not about to be
welcomed as an ally in any serious invasion to take out ISIS.
Saudi Arabia, with the region's fourth largest army, is like Turkey in
having offered more support than opposition to ISIS over the years. Besides,
Saudi Arabia is more obsessed with its criminal air war and naval blockade
of starving Yemen than it is with ISIS. And given Saudi unwillingness to
test its army in combat with the Houthis in Yemen, it's not clear how much
use they'd be invading anyone else.
Shi'a-majority Iran has good reason to oppose ISIS, which wants to kill all
Shi'a as apostates, but who's going to ally with them? Iran already has
troops on the ground in Iraq supporting the Shi'a Kurds (most Kurds are
Sunni).
So that massive invasion looks pretty unlikely if the US and Europeans don't
do it, and if they did it would be so last-century, and more pointless than
the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Egypt would have to cross two other Arab
countries to invade ISIS. Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, and Qatar (some of
which have been supporting ISIS) aren't likely to invade without Saudi
Arabia.
That leaves Israel, which feels much more threatened by Gaza than ISIS, even
though ISIS is making inroads in Gaza because ISIS considers Hamas too soft.
Besides, if a massive invasion drives ISIS out of Syria and Iraq, they
already have a Plan B. Thanks to President Obama and Secretary Clinton
(among many others), Libya is open and ready for occupancy (actually, ISIS
already has a stronghold around Sirte).
(2) Escalation of current military efforts, or new ones
For the US, escalation would mean more bombing, and more military advisors
to the Syrian Kurds and the Iraqi army. It might even include more training
and arming of Syrian "moderate" rebels although, if past results are a
guide, that would mean maybe ten trained fighters and more weapons and
supplies to ISIS.
Escalation could also mean shooting down Syrian military aircraft, or
Russian military aircraft, or even Turkish military aircraft when they
attack the Kurds the US is helping, all of which seems somewhere between
unlikely and mad.
Escalation of any sort, calibrated to any degree, implies a continued
commitment to bringing about an American-led solution to a host of
intractable military quagmires that are exacerbated by American
"leadership," and were to a great extent brought on by American-led
invasions. Just because Americans in the Middle East are not necessarily THE
problem, that doesn't mean the US hasn't made most of the other problems
worse (a huge exception being working with Iran in peace and respect).
It's hard to see any US military escalation that's likely to be useful
against ISIS. Humanitarian escalation in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere
might prove helpful, if it weren't resented too much by the neighbors.
(3) Maintaining the current stalemate
That assumes a stalemate is stable and relatively easy to maintain, which
almost surely is not true. But to continue doing what we're doing now and
expect different results would be, as they say, crazy. Would it be less
crazy to expect the same results, a kind of containment?
To maintain the present stalemate would require the Kurds, the Turks, the
Syrians, the Saudis, the Iraqis, and most everyone else to maintain their
own levels of effort. Right.
(4) Disengagement or withdrawal
For the US, this could mean just leaving the region to its own devices,
which are many and awful, but it would possibly be more dangerous to the
locals than to the rest of the world. Is it a gamble worth taking? Is it
even possible for the US to leave a vacuum and expect others not to fill it?
That leaves some level of disengagement as the apparent best choice where
there are no good choices. A good choice would have been: "First, do no
harm." But we squandered that opportunity in 1953, and in 2003, and too many
other times to be able to do it now. But the US might still aspire to do
less harm.
That would require the government to actually decide what the overall goal
of American policy is in the Middle East, articulate it and advertise it and
follow its logic. Presumably that would mean operating on principle more
than ad hoc opportunity. That would mean giving up non-negotiable
preconditions that tend to prolong conflicts mindlessly. For example,
requiring President Assad to step down in Syria is a mindless totem that
prolongs suffering in several countries and feeds a refugee crisis that
continues to spread to many more. The US does not have to endorse Assad to
enter into talks that can reduce suffering and may perhaps offer the only
path to ending that suffering in the near term.
Another example would involve reminding Turkey that it is a member of NATO
and, as such, the US is committed by treaty to defend it, and that that
commitment goes two ways. If Turkey wants to remain in NATO, if Turkey ever
wants to be in the European Union, the US and Europe should insist on
minimally decent Turkish behavior, such as NOT bombing allied forces and,
even more, NOT fighting for ISIS, supplying ISIS, buying oil from ISIS, and
allowing ISIS volunteers and agents free passage through Turkey in both
directions.
Measured, principled American disengagement would end the fiction that
"territorial integrity" means defending irrational lines on a map drawn by
colonial powers to serve their own interests after World War I. For example,
Iraq is an effectively ungovernable state that almost any sensate person
understands has three fairly distinct parts. American policy, to keep the
antagonistic factions of Iraq locked forever in the same cage, is a major
source of the region's fighting. The US backing of the Shi'a majority in
Iraq contributed directly to the evolution of al Qaeda and ISIS. And US
refusal to consider the possibility of a Kurdish state prolongs the
festering divisions not only in Iraq, but Iran, Syria, and Turkey as well.
Each of those four countries has murdered thousands of Kurds with programs
of ethnic cleansing that began a century ago and continue today. Rigid
American policy makes the US essentially an accessory-after-the-fact to past
genocide and enabler to new ones.
The US has enough genocide to atone for in its own history without aiding
and abetting genocidal impulses of others. The US has enough to atone for
around the world that it should disengage from genocidal impulses
everywhere. That would mean withdrawing from the Saudi-led war on Yemen.
What articulable policy goal does it serve for the US to participate in a
naval blockade that starves non-combatants on all sides? What noble
principle is served by the US co-planning Saudi air attacks that are killing
Yemeni civilians by the thousands?
Perhaps the next best step in opposing ISIS is for the US to stop behaving
like ISIS.
________________________________________
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
The aftermath of an ISIS car bomb attack. (photo: Wissm al-Okili/Reuters)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Notes on the Islamic Quagmires (Yes, Plural)
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
24 January 16
US options in dealing with Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, etc.)
n the abstract, the US has four broad options for dealing with the Islamic
State (ISIS), which now more or less controls most of eastern Syria and
northern Iraq, much of it uninhabitable. From this base, ISIS regularly
sends out multilingual messages of doom and destruction to the rest of the
world, but especially to "the infidel West," which includes the already
terrified US. None of the US options are particularly attractive, none are
likely to be decisive, and any of them, even if taken independently, remain
dependent on others for their eventual usefulness.
The US and all the other players in the region are currently engaged in what
the Pentagon has called "a tactical stalemate" in and around the
self-declared ISIS caliphate that stretches like a web across some 12,000
square miles of Syria and Iraq, primarily along the great river valleys of
the Tigris and Euphrates, but also across acres of almost empty desert.
Taking the ISIS caliphate as the primary quagmire, the basic US options
going forward are: (1) invasion/occupation, (2) escalation, (3) maintaining
the stalemate, or (4) disengagement/withdrawal.
(1) Massive invasion, long occupation of the middle of the Middle East
Clearly some Republican presidential candidates and others on the right are
making noises that seem to call for just such overwhelming US force in a
region where no one anymore believes we would be greeted as liberators. But
invasion is far from a popular idea, and invasion with American troops is
probably off the table for a year or so, if not more. With no boots on the
ground, an occupation is not happening.
But a massive invasion, by the Kurds, say, with overwhelming American air
power in support - that seems more plausible. There are lots of Kurdish
fighters, called peshmerga in Iraq, where there are 80,000 to 250,000
according to unreliable estimates. There are also semi-independent Kurdish
military forces in Iran, Turkey, and Syria.
The Kurds in Syria and Iraq have effectively stood their ground against
ISIS, or pushed it back, despite being under-supplied by their supposed
allies. In Iraq, the US won't supply weapons to the peshmerga directly, only
through the Baghdad government, which doesn't want to see the Kurds get too
strong, especially while the Iraqi army remains over-matched against ISIS
(the pyrrhic victory in Ramadi left the former city of 400,000 largely
depopulated and in ruins).
A massive invasion including the Turks is a theoretical possibility, since
the Turks have the second largest army in the region (largest is Iran, third
is Egypt), but the Turks have spent the last few years helping ISIS more
than fighting it, as Turkey drifts ever further toward becoming an Islamic
state under President Erdogan. Besides, Turkey has already committed major
military forces to fighting the Kurds in eastern Turkey and occasionally
bombing the Kurds in Syria.
The Syrian government is already fighting ISIS in Syria, but not that
aggressively, since the greater threat comes from 33 Syrian rebel factions.
The Russian intervention on the side of the Syrian government seems to have
stabilized western Syria somewhat, but the Russians are not about to be
welcomed as an ally in any serious invasion to take out ISIS.
Saudi Arabia, with the region's fourth largest army, is like Turkey in
having offered more support than opposition to ISIS over the years. Besides,
Saudi Arabia is more obsessed with its criminal air war and naval blockade
of starving Yemen than it is with ISIS. And given Saudi unwillingness to
test its army in combat with the Houthis in Yemen, it's not clear how much
use they'd be invading anyone else.
Shi'a-majority Iran has good reason to oppose ISIS, which wants to kill all
Shi'a as apostates, but who's going to ally with them? Iran already has
troops on the ground in Iraq supporting the Shi'a Kurds (most Kurds are
Sunni).
So that massive invasion looks pretty unlikely if the US and Europeans don't
do it, and if they did it would be so last-century, and more pointless than
the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Egypt would have to cross two other Arab
countries to invade ISIS. Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, and Qatar (some of
which have been supporting ISIS) aren't likely to invade without Saudi
Arabia.
That leaves Israel, which feels much more threatened by Gaza than ISIS, even
though ISIS is making inroads in Gaza because ISIS considers Hamas too soft.
Besides, if a massive invasion drives ISIS out of Syria and Iraq, they
already have a Plan B. Thanks to President Obama and Secretary Clinton
(among many others), Libya is open and ready for occupancy (actually, ISIS
already has a stronghold around Sirte).
(2) Escalation of current military efforts, or new ones
For the US, escalation would mean more bombing, and more military advisors
to the Syrian Kurds and the Iraqi army. It might even include more training
and arming of Syrian "moderate" rebels although, if past results are a
guide, that would mean maybe ten trained fighters and more weapons and
supplies to ISIS.
Escalation could also mean shooting down Syrian military aircraft, or
Russian military aircraft, or even Turkish military aircraft when they
attack the Kurds the US is helping, all of which seems somewhere between
unlikely and mad.
Escalation of any sort, calibrated to any degree, implies a continued
commitment to bringing about an American-led solution to a host of
intractable military quagmires that are exacerbated by American
"leadership," and were to a great extent brought on by American-led
invasions. Just because Americans in the Middle East are not necessarily THE
problem, that doesn't mean the US hasn't made most of the other problems
worse (a huge exception being working with Iran in peace and respect).
It's hard to see any US military escalation that's likely to be useful
against ISIS. Humanitarian escalation in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere
might prove helpful, if it weren't resented too much by the neighbors.
(3) Maintaining the current stalemate
That assumes a stalemate is stable and relatively easy to maintain, which
almost surely is not true. But to continue doing what we're doing now and
expect different results would be, as they say, crazy. Would it be less
crazy to expect the same results, a kind of containment?
To maintain the present stalemate would require the Kurds, the Turks, the
Syrians, the Saudis, the Iraqis, and most everyone else to maintain their
own levels of effort. Right.
(4) Disengagement or withdrawal
For the US, this could mean just leaving the region to its own devices,
which are many and awful, but it would possibly be more dangerous to the
locals than to the rest of the world. Is it a gamble worth taking? Is it
even possible for the US to leave a vacuum and expect others not to fill it?
That leaves some level of disengagement as the apparent best choice where
there are no good choices. A good choice would have been: "First, do no
harm." But we squandered that opportunity in 1953, and in 2003, and too many
other times to be able to do it now. But the US might still aspire to do
less harm.
That would require the government to actually decide what the overall goal
of American policy is in the Middle East, articulate it and advertise it and
follow its logic. Presumably that would mean operating on principle more
than ad hoc opportunity. That would mean giving up non-negotiable
preconditions that tend to prolong conflicts mindlessly. For example,
requiring President Assad to step down in Syria is a mindless totem that
prolongs suffering in several countries and feeds a refugee crisis that
continues to spread to many more. The US does not have to endorse Assad to
enter into talks that can reduce suffering and may perhaps offer the only
path to ending that suffering in the near term.
Another example would involve reminding Turkey that it is a member of NATO
and, as such, the US is committed by treaty to defend it, and that that
commitment goes two ways. If Turkey wants to remain in NATO, if Turkey ever
wants to be in the European Union, the US and Europe should insist on
minimally decent Turkish behavior, such as NOT bombing allied forces and,
even more, NOT fighting for ISIS, supplying ISIS, buying oil from ISIS, and
allowing ISIS volunteers and agents free passage through Turkey in both
directions.
Measured, principled American disengagement would end the fiction that
"territorial integrity" means defending irrational lines on a map drawn by
colonial powers to serve their own interests after World War I. For example,
Iraq is an effectively ungovernable state that almost any sensate person
understands has three fairly distinct parts. American policy, to keep the
antagonistic factions of Iraq locked forever in the same cage, is a major
source of the region's fighting. The US backing of the Shi'a majority in
Iraq contributed directly to the evolution of al Qaeda and ISIS. And US
refusal to consider the possibility of a Kurdish state prolongs the
festering divisions not only in Iraq, but Iran, Syria, and Turkey as well.
Each of those four countries has murdered thousands of Kurds with programs
of ethnic cleansing that began a century ago and continue today. Rigid
American policy makes the US essentially an accessory-after-the-fact to past
genocide and enabler to new ones.
The US has enough genocide to atone for in its own history without aiding
and abetting genocidal impulses of others. The US has enough to atone for
around the world that it should disengage from genocidal impulses
everywhere. That would mean withdrawing from the Saudi-led war on Yemen.
What articulable policy goal does it serve for the US to participate in a
naval blockade that starves non-combatants on all sides? What noble
principle is served by the US co-planning Saudi air attacks that are killing
Yemeni civilians by the thousands?
Perhaps the next best step in opposing ISIS is for the US to stop behaving
like ISIS.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
