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Commentary No. 379, July 15, 2014

"Jihadistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran"


A jihadist movement, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has just scored a stunning and sweeping victory by capturing Mosul, Iraq's third city located in the north of the country. Their forces are proceeding southward towards Baghdad and have seized Tikrit, hometown of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi army seems to have fallen apart, having also ceded Kirkuk to the Kurds. ISIS has also taken prisoner Turkish diplomats and truckers. It now controls effectively a large chunk of the north and west of Iraq as well as a contiguous zone in the northeast corner of Syria. Commentators have labeled this trans-border zone Jihadistan. ISIS seeks to reestablish a caliphate in as large an area as possible, one based on a particularly strict version of sharia law.


The shock and fear that the successes of this movement have inspired may lead to major geopolitical realignments in the Middle East. Geopolitics is an arena of frequent surprises, in which known antagonists suddenly reconcile themselves and transform their relation into one of what the French call frères ennemis (friendly enemies). The most famous instance in the last half-century was the trip of Richard Nixon to China to meet with Mao Zedong, a trip that fundamentally revised the alignments within the modern world-system and has underlain the China-United States relationship ever since.


The world media have long emphasized the deep hostility between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Any reconciliation would therefore appear unlikely. But since there seem to have been secret meetings between the two countries in recent months, one must wonder if such a surprise geopolitical reversal is not in the offing.


Whenever such turnarounds occur, the question to ask is what the two sides get out of it. There must be certain common interests that outweigh the known bases of hostility. Let us start by putting aside one claim of analysts to explain the antagonism. This is the fact that Iran's government is controlled by Shi'ite imams and that of Saudi Arabia is controlled by a Sunni monarchy. This is of course true. But we should remember that up to 1979, Iran (under the Shah) and Saudi Arabia (under the same Sunni monarchy) were close geopolitical allies, and worked together within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on all issues related to the price of oil - a central economic concern for both countries. After 1979, Iran changed its politics and the public antagonism between the two commenced, but only then.


The fundamental issue that has pushed the public struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been a competition for the dominant geopolitical role in the region. What could change this now is precisely the rise of ISIS, which represents a grave menace for both states. The one common interest of the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Iran is their need for relative stability within their states and within the region as a whole.


Of course both regimes are beset by internal divisions between more "liberalizing" urban middle-class elements and advocates of a strict conservative version of traditional Islam. But the threat that ISIS represents to both groups in both countries could lead them to favor quieting down other kinds of struggles. There are presently such struggles between various non-ISIS forces going on in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, and elsewhere.


There are in addition other elements pushing towards this kind of reconciliation. Both regimes share a dismay about the uncertain but continuing interventions of the United States and European countries in their region. The Saudis have lost faith in the reliability of past alliances, and are coming closer to the Iranian view that the western world should allow the regional forces to settle their own differences. Both regimes are also unhappy about the constant and somewhat unpredictable role of Qatar in the region. And both regimes are unhappy at the inability to move forward with the creation of a meaningful Palestinian state. Both regimes cast a wary eye on the secular military regime now established in Egypt. And finally both regimes want to see some kind of political resolution of the conflicts in Afghanistan.


This is a long list of common interests. In short, they have more in common than outside analysts often credit. Furthermore, should they come to a historic accord, the new arrangement might attract a great deal of support - first of all from Turkey, but then as well from the Kurds, from the Maghreb, from Jordan, from Pakistan and India, from Russia and China, and even from within Afghanistan. Of course, this is speculation, but it is not idle speculation. The reality is that the regimes in both Saudi Arabia and Iran are worried about their survival amidst the growing disintegration of the Middle East. Continuing on their present course is not likely to help them survive. They may be thinking that it is time to change course.


by Immanuel Wallerstein
 
The mess in Iraq proves Obama was right to leave
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/16/5814590/the-mess-in-iraq-proves-obama-was-right-to-leave

The logic on display here shows the toxic self-justifying nature of American military adventures. If a war accomplishes its stated objectives, that goes to show that war is great. If a war fails to accomplish its stated objectives — as the Bush-era surge miserably failed to produce a durable political settlement in Iraq — then that simply proves that more war was called for.

But there is simply no reason to believe that the presence of American soldiers in Iraq makes a durable political settlement more likely, and there never has been. If eight years weren't enough, why would one more — or two more or twenty more — be the key to success?

The truth is the opposite. The speed with which the apparent gains of the surge melted away in the face of Iraq's entrenched domestic political problems underscores how futile the US-led campaign there was.
 
Iraq could be the first ripples of a tsunami eventually spreading across the region. I believe even Iran has to worry. Sad that so many lives were lost, bodies mangled, futures destroyed, and families devastated by the short sighted politicians.
 
We seem to have either short memories or none at all. There's got to be some of you guy's out there (or maybe not)that can remember when Saddam hussein was picked as Person of the year way back when Iraq was at one time called "The diamond of the middle east" it had the best universities, world class hospitals, etc. etc. Saddam hussein kept that area together with brute force, like every other dictator. When he was crossed he would have the man's son killed or his family killed, whatever he had to do to keep order in the midst of a tribal country that was at each others throats. It was a secular government. They tolerated them all as long as you didn't threaten his rule. If you did? Your gone, Now look at it. I believe Kuwait was once part of Iraq, also Hussein was pissed off at Kuwait for slant drilling Iraqs oil. At a meeting with April Glaspie he was given the green light to invade Kuwait. I'm sure everybody knows what happened after that. That whole area has been a basket case since the British, French, German governments and American oil companies started fucking around there prior to world war 1, then carved it up. We have put Iraq back into the stone age. And we have done, and are still doing the same to Afghanistan. What in Gods name are we killing our young men and women for.
 
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How ironic the turn around since Ibn Saud took possession of the arabian peninsula back around 1923. And in honor of his clan named it Saudi Arabia. He was the darling of British India, having a lot of dealings with them prior to WW1. Now Saudi Arabia is telling the west to fuck off, with reason, and the Saud family, and his Wahhabist,were not and are not friendly to Islam. There ain't no answer to this f******g mess we've created. And we won't even mention Palestine.
 
Leaving From Behind
by Mark Steyn
Steyn on the World
June 16, 2014

http://www.steynonline.com/6424/leaving-from-behind


So whose fault is the implosion of Iraq? Bush? Obama?

Back in the real world, Republicans don't lose wars and Democrats don't lose wars; America loses wars - which is how US allies and enemies alike judge what's happening in Iraq right now, and how it will be recorded in the history books. Tthere is certainly something to Robert Tracinski's analysis - that this was a wish-fulfilling prophesy for Obama, and that, in some deep primal sense, for the Democrats it was necessary ultimately for the Iraq war to be lost. Undeniably lost. And to be seen to be undeniably lost - even if it took five-and-a-half years after Bush's departure from office, or about the length of the entire Second World War.

Let it be said that there is more than enough blame to go round. I see Senator Lindsey Graham has been all over the airwaves saying we need to work with Iran to help save Iraq from ISIS. This is the same Lindsey Graham who's been calling for the US to assist Syrian rebels in trying to overthrow Assad, Iran's client. The Syrian resistance is dominated by the same guys currently overrunning Iraq - the Sunni jihadists of the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria". Consider the now largely erased Syrian/Iraqi border: On the eastern side of this vanished line, a disaffected Sunni who takes up arms against an Iranian client in Baghdad is an enemy of the United States whom we must join with Iran in destroying; but, on the western side of this vanished line, a disaffected Sunni who takes up arms against an Iranian client in Damascus is a plucky Arab Spring freedom fighter entitled to the full support of the United States. Granted that this isn't the easiest part of the world in which to distinguish friend from foe, the way around this abiding problem is not to locate both of them within, literally, the same person.

So Senator Graham is making even less sense than usual.

Let it also be said that President Obama's antipathy to meaningful military action undoubtedly commands the support of the American people, who after 13 years of slow-motion unwon wars have had enough. By the way, even we supporters of the Afghan and Iraqi interventions are not in favor only of war. There's a whole section of America Alone (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available, etc, etc), beginning on page 158, on the other elements of national power through which an effective sovereign state prosecutes its interests - diplomatic, economic, legal, informational, cultural... They're what medium-rank nations call "soft power" and Hillary Clinton calls "smart power". The problem is simple: As inept as they might think the Republicans' deployment of hard power is, the Democrats' use of soft power is even lousier. Effective soft power requires great clarity and cunning, neither of which President Obama, Secretary Kerry or anybody else seems to possess.

Hence the chain of dominoes:

~In 2011, in the Arab Spring, the Obama Administration announced it was "leading from behind". If you were in Cairo, Teheran, Moscow, Beijing and elsewhere, that told you something about American passivity: The superpower had no interest in shaping events but merely in tagging along with them.

~In 2012, in the wake of a well-planned military assault on sovereign US territory in Benghazi and the first murder of a US ambassador in a third of a century, the Obama Administration chose to pretend that it was something to do with an obscure YouTube video. The President of Libya blamed the attack on Ansar al-Sharia and linked them to al-Qaeda's Maghreb affiliate, but Obama, Mrs Clinton, Susan Rice and their court eunuchs in the media covered their ears and said, "Can't hear you." So the men who sacked the diplomatic mission and killed its staff are all still walking around, but back in California the maker of the unseen video was tossed in jail where he languishes to this day. Again, if you were in Teheran, Moscow, Kabul, Damascus, this seemingly perverse misdirection told you something more about how committed America was to that passivity: The superpower's preferred foreign-policy posture, even after a direct, bloody assault on its own territory, was to call "Check, please!" and head for the exit.

~In 2013, after Boy Assad in Syria got out his pop's Hama playbook, Obama found himself hoist on his own rhetorical petard. He'd carelessly wandered off prompter and insisted that, should Assad make the mistake of using chemical weapons, that would be a "red line" for Obama. Assad had a good laugh at that and went ahead and gassed his unfortunate subjects. Obama immediately went around saying that, oh, no, he hadn't drawn any red line, the international community had drawn a red line. And just to underline the point John Kerry assured the world that, even if it was America's red line, any military response would be "unbelievably small". Which was all too believable viewed from Damascus, Teheran and Moscow. Indeed, they believed that Obama's preferred military response would not be merely "unbelievably small" but undetectably so. As in Benghazi, Washington was looking for the exit. So Vladimir Putin decided to help Obama off his hook by pretending that business about "the world's red line" was real, and brokering a deal. It was a terrible deal - it left Assad in power, the mullahs as his patron, and put the Kremlin back in the Middle East as a serious player for the first time in two generations. By letting Assad get away with war crimes, it also ensured that no "moderate" opposition would have a chance of unseating him. So effective resistance to the regime fell to the bloodier hardcore jihadists. But Putin and the mullahs correctly understood that Obama would let them erase his red line, and so they did.

~In 2014, hardened and emboldened by their success in Syria, ISIS began annexing Iraq's Sunni Triangle, and then moved beyond. In Fallujah, on buildings built by the United States, the black flag of al-Qaeda now flies. In Mosul, they helped themselves to half-a-billion dollars, and rode on toward Baghdad in state-of-the-art armored vehicles supplied by the United States. Yesterday they used US Stinger missiles left behind by the fleeing Iraqi forces. The biggest and most expensive embassy in the history of embassies is already being evacuated. The US is presently busy raising LGBTQ flags on its diplomatic missions, but any Baghdad diplomat minded to run it up the Green Zone flagpole is going to have to be quick about it. As before, the United States is at pains to announce that any military response will be "unbelievably small". Teheran has calculated that at minimum it can get a Shia statelet in southern Iraq, and at maximum the sky's the limit. That's to say, at the current P5+1 talks in Geneva, the nuclear negotiations are going nowhere and all the action is in the behind-the-scenes contacts re US-Iranian "cooperation" against ISIS.

You'll notice that the dominoes are getting bigger. The Arab Spring was a sappy delusion in which sentimentalist pap about the "Facebook Revolution" ran up against the hard, cruel reality of the only viable alternatives to the dictators. In Benghazi, the powder-puff illusions were blown apart, but realpolitik cynics could conclude it's not an important town, or even an important country, so what's the big deal? In Syria, we strengthened Russia, Iran and the jihad, but it's mostly Assad's hapless citizens who are on the receiving end, so who cares? Between Aleppo and Tikrit, ISIS redrew the map of the Anglo-French Middle East for the first time since 1922 and created a hardcore jihad state, but hey, we can probably blame that on Bush and Cheney, right?

And so the consequences of a shrunken America metastasize - from jihadist gangs in Benghazi to chemical gas attacks in Syria to the world's wealthiest jihad state in western Iraq to nuclear ayatollahs, the biggest domino of all. Any US-Iranian deal will be like that Bergdahl/Taliban one. The purpose of "cooperation" for the mullahs would be to provide cover for getting them into Iraq, while the purpose of "cooperation" for the Obama Administration would be to provide cover for staying out. So Iranians would be on the ground in the Shia south while a few drones and whatnot would bomb the Sunni Triangle. The bombing raids would end, but the Iranians would remain. And a nuclear Iran would be born not as a global pariah but within the context of a Washington-Teheran rapprochement.

And what of that jihad state straddling the Syrian/Iraqi border? What's the next 90-year-old Colonial Office line-in-the-sand to get stomped over? What's the next domino? If you were King Abdullah in Amman, what would you reckon were the chances of your American chums helping you fend off the new pan-Sunni caliphate? What about the Saudis? What about the biggest pool of oil on the planet?

And what of the dominoes beyond? Thousands of nominally "western" citizens - young men from Britain, Canada, Europe and, yes, America - have swarmed to Syria to join the jihad. In Osama's strong horse/weak horse terms, they're riding high. But one day they'll saddle up and return "home" with their western passports, having acquired lots of new and incendiary skills.

The biggest dominoes are yet to fall. But, big or small, all these parties - the ayatollahs, the jihadists, the Russians - have read Washington correctly, and, in the vacuum of American power, all are getting what they want.

Obama has stayed consistently "unbelievably small" from Cairo to Benghazi to Damascus to Mosul, even as the dominoes are getting bigger. America is leaving from behind - going, going, gone.
 
Abdication has a price
http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/charles-krauthammer
Charles Krauthammer

June 19

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...14dafe-f7e6-11e3-8aa9-dad2ec039789_story.html


Yes, it is true that there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq when George W. Bush took office. But it is equally true that there was essentially no al-Qaeda in Iraq remaining when Barack Obama took office.

Which makes Bush responsible for the terrible costs incurred to defeat the 2003-09 jihadist war engendered by his invasion. We can debate forever whether those costs were worth it, but what is not debatable is Obama’s responsibility for the return of the Islamist insurgency that had been routed by the time he became president.

By 2009, al-Qaeda in Iraq had not just been decimated but humiliated by the U.S. surge and the Anbar Awakening. Here were aggrieved Sunnis, having ferociously fought the Americans who had overthrown 80 years of Sunni hegemony, now reversing allegiance and joining the infidel invader in crushing, indeed extirpating from Iraq, their fellow Sunnis of al-Qaeda.

At the same time, Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki turned the Iraqi army against radical Shiite militias from Basra all the way north to Baghdad.

The result? “A sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.” That’s not Bush congratulating himself. That’s Obama in December 2011 describing the Iraq we were leaving behind. He called it “an extraordinary achievement.”

Which is what made his failure to do so in Iraq so disastrous. His excuse was his inability to get immunity for U.S. soldiers. Nonsense. Bush had worked out a compromise in his 2008 SOFA, as we have done with allies everywhere. The real problem was Obama’s determination to “end the war.” He had three years to negotiate a deal and didn’t even begin talks until a few months before the deadline period.

He offered to leave about 3,000 to 5,000 troops, a ridiculous number. U.S. commanders said they needed nearly 20,000. (We have 28,500 in South Korea and http://www.usfj.mil/Welcome.html to this day.) Such a minuscule contingent would spend all its time just protecting itself. Iraqis know a nonserious offer when they see one. Why bear the domestic political liability of a continued U.S. presence for a mere token?

Moreover, as historian Max Boot has pointed out, Obama insisted on parliamentary ratification, which the Iraqis explained was not just impossible but unnecessary. So Obama ordered a full withdrawal. And with it disappeared U.S. influence in curbing sectarianism, mediating among factions and providing both intelligence and tactical advice to Iraqi forces now operating on their own.

The result was predictable. And predicted. Overnight, Iran and its promotion of Shiite supremacy became the dominant influence in Iraq. The day after the U.S. departure, Maliki ordered the arrest of the Sunni vice president. He cut off funding for the Sons of Iraq, the Sunnis who had fought with us against al-Qaeda. And subsequently so persecuted and alienated Sunnis that they were ready to welcome back al-Qaeda in Iraq — rebranded in its Syrian refuge as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — as the lesser of two evils. Hence the stunningly swift ISIS capture of Mosul, Tikrit and so much of Sunni Iraq.

But the jihadist revival is the result of a double Obama abdication: creating a vacuum not just in Iraq but in Syria. Obama dithered and speechified during the early days of the Syrian revolution, before the jihadists had arrived, when the secular revolt was systematically advancing on the Damascus regime.

Hezbollah, Iran and Russia helped the regime survive. Meanwhile, a jihadist enclave (including remnants of the once-routed al-Qaeda in Iraq) developed in large swaths of northern and eastern Syria. They thrived on massive outside support while the secular revolutionaries foundered waiting vainly for U.S. help.

Faced with a de facto jihadi state spanning both countries, a surprised Obama now has little choice but to try to re-create overnight, from scratch and in miniature, the kind of U.S. presence — providing intelligence, tactical advice and perhaps even air support — he abjured three years ago

His announcement Thursday that he is sending 300 military advisers is the beginning of that re-creation — a pale substitute for what we long should have had in place but the only option Obama has left himself. The leverage and influence he forfeited with his total withdrawal will be hard to reclaim. But it’s our only chance to keep Iraq out of the hands of the Sunni jihadists of ISIS and the Shiite jihadists of Tehran.
 
CensoredBoardsSuck said:
Abdication has a price
Charles Krauthammer

June 19

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...14dafe-f7e6-11e3-8aa9-dad2ec039789_story.html


Yes, it is true that there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq when George W. Bush took office. But it is equally true that there was essentially no al-Qaeda in Iraq remaining when Barack Obama took office.

Which makes Bush responsible for the terrible costs incurred to defeat the 2003-09 jihadist war engendered by his invasion. We can debate forever whether those costs were worth it, but what is not debatable is Obama’s responsibility for the return of the Islamist insurgency that had been routed by the time he became president.

By 2009, al-Qaeda in Iraq had not just been decimated but humiliated by the U.S. surge and the Anbar Awakening. Here were aggrieved Sunnis, having ferociously fought the Americans who had overthrown 80 years of Sunni hegemony, now reversing allegiance and joining the infidel invader in crushing, indeed extirpating from Iraq, their fellow Sunnis of al-Qaeda.

At the same time, Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki turned the Iraqi army against radical Shiite militias from Basra all the way north to Baghdad.

The result? “A sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.” That’s not Bush congratulating himself. That’s Obama in December 2011 describing the Iraq we were leaving behind. He called it “an extraordinary achievement.”

Which is what made his failure to do so in Iraq so disastrous. His excuse was his inability to get immunity for U.S. soldiers. Nonsense. Bush had worked out a compromise in his 2008 SOFA, as we have done with allies everywhere. The real problem was Obama’s determination to “end the war.” He had three years to negotiate a deal and didn’t even begin talks until a few months before the deadline period.

He offered to leave about 3,000 to 5,000 troops, a ridiculous number. U.S. commanders said they needed nearly 20,000. (We have 28,500 in South Korea and http://www.usfj.mil/Welcome.html to this day.) Such a minuscule contingent would spend all its time just protecting itself. Iraqis know a nonserious offer when they see one. Why bear the domestic political liability of a continued U.S. presence for a mere token?

Moreover, as historian Max Boot has pointed out, Obama insisted on parliamentary ratification, which the Iraqis explained was not just impossible but unnecessary. So Obama ordered a full withdrawal. And with it disappeared U.S. influence in curbing sectarianism, mediating among factions and providing both intelligence and tactical advice to Iraqi forces now operating on their own.

The result was predictable. And predicted. Overnight, Iran and its promotion of Shiite supremacy became the dominant influence in Iraq. The day after the U.S. departure, Maliki ordered the arrest of the Sunni vice president. He cut off funding for the Sons of Iraq, the Sunnis who had fought with us against al-Qaeda. And subsequently so persecuted and alienated Sunnis that they were ready to welcome back al-Qaeda in Iraq — rebranded in its Syrian refuge as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — as the lesser of two evils. Hence the stunningly swift ISIS capture of Mosul, Tikrit and so much of Sunni Iraq.

But the jihadist revival is the result of a double Obama abdication: creating a vacuum not just in Iraq but in Syria. Obama dithered and speechified during the early days of the Syrian revolution, before the jihadists had arrived, when the secular revolt was systematically advancing on the Damascus regime.

Hezbollah, Iran and Russia helped the regime survive. Meanwhile, a jihadist enclave (including remnants of the once-routed al-Qaeda in Iraq) developed in large swaths of northern and eastern Syria. They thrived on massive outside support while the secular revolutionaries foundered waiting vainly for U.S. help.

Faced with a de facto jihadi state spanning both countries, a surprised Obama now has little choice but to try to re-create overnight, from scratch and in miniature, the kind of U.S. presence — providing intelligence, tactical advice and perhaps even air support — he abjured three years ago

His announcement Thursday that he is sending 300 military advisers is the beginning of that re-creation — a pale substitute for what we long should have had in place but the only option Obama has left himself. The leverage and influence he forfeited with his total withdrawal will be hard to reclaim. But it’s our only chance to keep Iraq out of the hands of the Sunni jihadists of ISIS and the Shiite jihadists of Tehran.
Click to expand...

CensoredBoardsSuck said:
Leaving From Behind
by Mark Steyn
Steyn on the World
June 16, 2014

http://www.steynonline.com/6424/leaving-from-behind


So whose fault is the implosion of Iraq? Bush? Obama?

Back in the real world, Republicans don't lose wars and Democrats don't lose wars; America loses wars - which is how US allies and enemies alike judge what's happening in Iraq right now, and how it will be recorded in the history books. Tthere is certainly something to Robert Tracinski's analysis - that this was a wish-fulfilling prophesy for Obama, and that, in some deep primal sense, for the Democrats it was necessary ultimately for the Iraq war to be lost. Undeniably lost. And to be seen to be undeniably lost - even if it took five-and-a-half years after Bush's departure from office, or about the length of the entire Second World War.

Let it be said that there is more than enough blame to go round. I see Senator Lindsey Graham has been all over the airwaves saying we need to work with Iran to help save Iraq from ISIS. This is the same Lindsey Graham who's been calling for the US to assist Syrian rebels in trying to overthrow Assad, Iran's client. The Syrian resistance is dominated by the same guys currently overrunning Iraq - the Sunni jihadists of the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria". Consider the now largely erased Syrian/Iraqi border: On the eastern side of this vanished line, a disaffected Sunni who takes up arms against an Iranian client in Baghdad is an enemy of the United States whom we must join with Iran in destroying; but, on the western side of this vanished line, a disaffected Sunni who takes up arms against an Iranian client in Damascus is a plucky Arab Spring freedom fighter entitled to the full support of the United States. Granted that this isn't the easiest part of the world in which to distinguish friend from foe, the way around this abiding problem is not to locate both of them within, literally, the same person.

So Senator Graham is making even less sense than usual.

Let it also be said that President Obama's antipathy to meaningful military action undoubtedly commands the support of the American people, who after 13 years of slow-motion unwon wars have had enough. By the way, even we supporters of the Afghan and Iraqi interventions are not in favor only of war. There's a whole section of America Alone (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available, etc, etc), beginning on page 158, on the other elements of national power through which an effective sovereign state prosecutes its interests - diplomatic, economic, legal, informational, cultural... They're what medium-rank nations call "soft power" and Hillary Clinton calls "smart power". The problem is simple: As inept as they might think the Republicans' deployment of hard power is, the Democrats' use of soft power is even lousier. Effective soft power requires great clarity and cunning, neither of which President Obama, Secretary Kerry or anybody else seems to possess.

Hence the chain of dominoes:

~In 2011, in the Arab Spring, the Obama Administration announced it was "leading from behind". If you were in Cairo, Teheran, Moscow, Beijing and elsewhere, that told you something about American passivity: The superpower had no interest in shaping events but merely in tagging along with them.

~In 2012, in the wake of a well-planned military assault on sovereign US territory in Benghazi and the first murder of a US ambassador in a third of a century, the Obama Administration chose to pretend that it was something to do with an obscure YouTube video. The President of Libya blamed the attack on Ansar al-Sharia and linked them to al-Qaeda's Maghreb affiliate, but Obama, Mrs Clinton, Susan Rice and their court eunuchs in the media covered their ears and said, "Can't hear you." So the men who sacked the diplomatic mission and killed its staff are all still walking around, but back in California the maker of the unseen video was tossed in jail where he languishes to this day. Again, if you were in Teheran, Moscow, Kabul, Damascus, this seemingly perverse misdirection told you something more about how committed America was to that passivity: The superpower's preferred foreign-policy posture, even after a direct, bloody assault on its own territory, was to call "Check, please!" and head for the exit.

~In 2013, after Boy Assad in Syria got out his pop's Hama playbook, Obama found himself hoist on his own rhetorical petard. He'd carelessly wandered off prompter and insisted that, should Assad make the mistake of using chemical weapons, that would be a "red line" for Obama. Assad had a good laugh at that and went ahead and gassed his unfortunate subjects. Obama immediately went around saying that, oh, no, he hadn't drawn any red line, the international community had drawn a red line. And just to underline the point John Kerry assured the world that, even if it was America's red line, any military response would be "unbelievably small". Which was all too believable viewed from Damascus, Teheran and Moscow. Indeed, they believed that Obama's preferred military response would not be merely "unbelievably small" but undetectably so. As in Benghazi, Washington was looking for the exit. So Vladimir Putin decided to help Obama off his hook by pretending that business about "the world's red line" was real, and brokering a deal. It was a terrible deal - it left Assad in power, the mullahs as his patron, and put the Kremlin back in the Middle East as a serious player for the first time in two generations. By letting Assad get away with war crimes, it also ensured that no "moderate" opposition would have a chance of unseating him. So effective resistance to the regime fell to the bloodier hardcore jihadists. But Putin and the mullahs correctly understood that Obama would let them erase his red line, and so they did.

~In 2014, hardened and emboldened by their success in Syria, ISIS began annexing Iraq's Sunni Triangle, and then moved beyond. In Fallujah, on buildings built by the United States, the black flag of al-Qaeda now flies. In Mosul, they helped themselves to half-a-billion dollars, and rode on toward Baghdad in state-of-the-art armored vehicles supplied by the United States. Yesterday they used US Stinger missiles left behind by the fleeing Iraqi forces. The biggest and most expensive embassy in the history of embassies is already being evacuated. The US is presently busy raising LGBTQ flags on its diplomatic missions, but any Baghdad diplomat minded to run it up the Green Zone flagpole is going to have to be quick about it. As before, the United States is at pains to announce that any military response will be "unbelievably small". Teheran has calculated that at minimum it can get a Shia statelet in southern Iraq, and at maximum the sky's the limit. That's to say, at the current P5+1 talks in Geneva, the nuclear negotiations are going nowhere and all the action is in the behind-the-scenes contacts re US-Iranian "cooperation" against ISIS.

You'll notice that the dominoes are getting bigger. The Arab Spring was a sappy delusion in which sentimentalist pap about the "Facebook Revolution" ran up against the hard, cruel reality of the only viable alternatives to the dictators. In Benghazi, the powder-puff illusions were blown apart, but realpolitik cynics could conclude it's not an important town, or even an important country, so what's the big deal? In Syria, we strengthened Russia, Iran and the jihad, but it's mostly Assad's hapless citizens who are on the receiving end, so who cares? Between Aleppo and Tikrit, ISIS redrew the map of the Anglo-French Middle East for the first time since 1922 and created a hardcore jihad state, but hey, we can probably blame that on Bush and Cheney, right?

And so the consequences of a shrunken America metastasize - from jihadist gangs in Benghazi to chemical gas attacks in Syria to the world's wealthiest jihad state in western Iraq to nuclear ayatollahs, the biggest domino of all. Any US-Iranian deal will be like that Bergdahl/Taliban one. The purpose of "cooperation" for the mullahs would be to provide cover for getting them into Iraq, while the purpose of "cooperation" for the Obama Administration would be to provide cover for staying out. So Iranians would be on the ground in the Shia south while a few drones and whatnot would bomb the Sunni Triangle. The bombing raids would end, but the Iranians would remain. And a nuclear Iran would be born not as a global pariah but within the context of a Washington-Teheran rapprochement.

And what of that jihad state straddling the Syrian/Iraqi border? What's the next 90-year-old Colonial Office line-in-the-sand to get stomped over? What's the next domino? If you were King Abdullah in Amman, what would you reckon were the chances of your American chums helping you fend off the new pan-Sunni caliphate? What about the Saudis? What about the biggest pool of oil on the planet?

And what of the dominoes beyond? Thousands of nominally "western" citizens - young men from Britain, Canada, Europe and, yes, America - have swarmed to Syria to join the jihad. In Osama's strong horse/weak horse terms, they're riding high. But one day they'll saddle up and return "home" with their western passports, having acquired lots of new and incendiary skills.

The biggest dominoes are yet to fall. But, big or small, all these parties - the ayatollahs, the jihadists, the Russians - have read Washington correctly, and, in the vacuum of American power, all are getting what they want.

Obama has stayed consistently "unbelievably small" from Cairo to Benghazi to Damascus to Mosul, even as the dominoes are getting bigger. America is leaving from behind - going, going, gone.
Click to expand...
my heart truly bleeds! When I think of what all of us warfighters did and where and how we did it,I sometimes want to cry. Was it ALL FOR NOTHING? We did as we were told to the utmost of our abilities. In closing this personal diddy, Im sorry?
GOOSE
 
Juice n Goose said:
my heart truly bleeds! When I think of what all of us warfighters did and where and how we did it,I sometimes want to cry. Was it ALL FOR NOTHING? We did as we were told to the utmost of our abilities. In closing this personal diddy, Im sorry?
GOOSE
Click to expand...

Our marines, navy, army, and all the other warriors that were called to serve in all our wars and conflicts should have nothing to feel but pride for there service when called.We all owe them a great debt. There is no comparison between them and the leaders of the countries that called upon them. They are a special type of person that puts themselves in harms way for their families and country. The causes and politics have no bearing on their bravery and patriotism. Men have given their lives in combat for their brothers. "Was it all for nothing" absolutely not. I thank each and every one of you. Someone once said "everybody that comes back is wounded".
 
WHO'S THE WINNER IN THIS CLUSTER F....k?


Splitting up Iraq

It’s all for Israel
by MIKE WHITNEY

“It is no longer plausible to argue that ISIS was a result of unintentional screw ups by the US. It is a clear part of a US strategy to break up the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hezbollah alliance. Now that strategy may prove to be a total failure and end up backfiring, but make no mistake, ISIS IS the strategy.”

- Lysander, Comments line, Moon of Alabama

“US imperialism has been the principal instigator of sectarianism in the region, from its divide-and-conquer strategy in the war and occupation in Iraq, to the fomenting of sectarian civil war to topple Assad in Syria. Its cynical support for Sunni Islamist insurgents in Syria, while backing a Shiite sectarian regime across the border in Iraq to suppress these very same forces, has brought the entire Middle East to what a United Nations panel on Syria warned Tuesday was the “cusp of a regional war.”

- Bill Van Auken, Obama orders nearly 300 US troops to Iraq, World Socialist Web Site

Barack Obama is blackmailing Nouri al-Maliki by withholding military support until the Iraqi Prime Minister agrees to step down. In other words, we are mid-stream in another regime change operation authored by Washington. What’s different about this operation, is the fact that Obama is using a small army of jihadi terrorists –who have swept to within 50 miles of Baghdad–to hold the gun to Mr. al Maliki’s head. Not surprisingly, al Maliki has refused to cooperate which means the increasingly-tense situation could explode into a civil war. Here’s the scoop from the Guardian in an article aptly titled “Iraq’s Maliki: I won’t quit as condition of US strikes against Isis militants”:

“A spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has said he will not stand down as a condition of US air strikes against Sunni militants who have made a lightning advance across the country.
Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, on Wednesday made a public call on al-Arabiya television for the US to launch strikes, but Barack Obama has come under pressure from senior US politicians to persuade Maliki… to step down over what they see as failed leadership in the face of an insurgency…
The White House has not called for Maliki to go but its spokesman Jay Carney said that whether Iraq was led by Maliki or a successor, “we will aggressively attempt to impress upon that leader the absolute necessity of rejecting sectarian governance”. (Iraq’s Maliki: I won’t quit as condition of US strikes against Isis militants, Guardian)

Obviously, the White House can’t tell al Maliki to leave point-blank or it would affect their credibility as proponents of democracy. But the fix is definitely in and the administration’s plan to oust al Maliki is well underway. Check out this clip from the Wall Street Journal:

“A growing number of U.S. lawmakers and Arab allies, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are pressing the White House to pull its support for Mr. Maliki. Some of them are pushing for change in exchange for providing their help in stabilizing Iraq, say U.S. and Arab diplomats.” (U.S. Signals Iraq’s Maliki Should Go, Wall Street Journal)

Pay special attention to the last sentence: “Some of them are pushing for change in exchange for providing their help in stabilizing Iraq”. That sounds a lot like blackmail to me.
This is the crux of what is going on behind the scenes. Barack Obama and his lieutenants are twisting al Maliki ‘s arm to force him out of office. That’s what the Thursday press conference was all about. Obama identified the group called the Isis as terrorists, acknowledged that they posed a grave danger to the government, and then breezily opined that he would not lift a finger to help. Why? Why is Obama so eager to blow up suspected terrorists in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan and yet unwilling to do so in Iraq? Could it be that Obama is not really committed to fighting terrorists at all, that the terror-ruse is just a fig leaf for much grander plans, like global domination?
Of course, it is. In any event, it’s plain to see that Obama is not going to help al Maliki if it interferes with Washington’s broader strategic objectives. And, at present, those objectives are to get rid of al Maliki, who is “too tight” with Tehran, and who refused to sign Status Of Forces Agreement in 2011 which would have allowed the US to leave 30,000 troops in Iraq. The rejection of SOFA effectively sealed al Maliki’s fate and made him an enemy of the United States. It was only a matter of time before Washington took steps to remove him from office. Here’s a clip from Obama’s press conference on Thursday that illustrates how these things work:
Obama: “The key to both Syria and Iraq is going to be a combination of what happens inside the country, working with moderate Syrian opposition, working with an Iraqi government that is inclusive, and us laying down a more effective counterterrorism platform that gets all the countries in the region pulling in the same direction. Rather than try to play whack-a-mole wherever these terrorist organizations may pop up, what we have to do is to be able to build effective partnerships.”
What does this mean in language that we can all understand?
It means that “you’re either on the team or you’re off the team”. If you are on the US team, then you will enjoy the benefits of “partnership” which means the US will help to defend you against the terrorist groups which they arm, fund and provide logistical support for. (through their Gulf State allies) If you are “off the team” –as Mr. al Maliki appears to be, then Washington will look the other way while the hordes of vicious miscreants tear the heads off your soldiers, burn your cities to the ground, and reduce your country to ungovernable anarchy. So, there’s a choice to be made. Either you can play along and follow orders and “nobody gets hurt, or go-it-alone and face the consequences.
Capisce? Obama is running a protection racket just like some two-bit Mafia shakedown-artist from the ‘hood. And I am not speaking metaphorically here. This is the way it really works. The president of the United States is threatening a democratically-elected leader, who–by the way–was hand-picked and rubber-stamped by the Bush administration–because he has not turned out to be sufficiently servile in kowtowing to their demands. So, now they’re going to replace him with another corrupt stooge like Chalabi. That’s right, the shifty Ahmed Chalabi has reemerged from his spiderhole and is making a bid to take al Maliki’s place. This is from the New York Times:

“Iraq officials said Thursday that political leaders had started intensive jockeying to replace Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and create a government that would span the country’s deepening sectarian and ethnic divisions, spurred by what they called encouraging meetings with American officials signaling support for a leadership change…
The names floated so far — Adel Abdul Mahdi, Ahmed Chalabi and Bayan Jaber — are from the Shiite blocs, which have the largest share of the total seats in the Parliament.” (With Nod From U.S., Iraqis Seek New Leader, New York Times)

Remember Chalabi? Neocon favorite, Chalabi. The guy who –as Business Insider notes “was a central figure in the U.S.’s decision to remove the Iraqi dictator over a decade ago” and “who helped get the Iraq Liberation Act passed through Congress in 1998, a law that made regime change in Baghdad an official U.S. policy.” “Chalabi claimed that Saddam was an imminent threat to the U.S., and was both holding and developing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, (which) became the view of the intelligence community and eventually the majority of the U.S. congress. In the first four years of the Bush administration, Chalabi’s INC recieved $39 million from the U.S. government.” (Business Insider)
You can’t make this stuff up.
So, good old Chalabi is on the short-list of candidates to take al Maliki’s place. Great. That just illustrates the level of thinking about these matters in the Obama White House. I don’t know how anyone can objectively follow these developments and not conclude that the neocons are calling the shots. Of course they’re calling the shots. Chalabi’s “their guy”. In fact, the goals the administration is pursuing, aren’t really even in US interests at all.
Bear with me for a minute: Let’s assume that we’re correct in our belief that the administration has set its sites on four main strategic objectives in Iraq:
1–Removing al Maliki
2–Gaining basing rights via a new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)
3–Rolling back Iran’s influence in the region
4–Partitioning the country
How does the US benefit from achieving these goals?
The US has plenty of military bases and installations spread around the Middle East. It gains nothing by having another in Iraq. The same goes for removing al Maliki. There’s no telling how that could turn out. Maybe good, maybe bad. It’s a roll of the dice. Could come up snake-eyes, who knows? But, one thing is certain; it will further erode confidence in the US as a serious supporter of democracy. No one is going to believe that fable anymore. (Al Maliki just won the recent election.)
As for “rolling back Iran’s influence in the region”: That doesn’t even make sense. It was the United States that removed the Sunni Baathists from power and deliberately replaced them with members from the Shia community. As we’ve shown in earlier articles, shifting power from Sunnis to Shia was a crucial part of the original occupation strategy, which was transparently loony from the get go. It was as if the British invaded the US and decided to replace career politicians and Washington bureaucrats with inexperienced service sector employees from the barrios of LA. Does that make sense? The results turned out to be a disaster, as anyone with half a brain could have predicted. Because the plan was idiotic. No empire has ever operated like that. Of course, there was going to be a tacit alliance between Baghdad and Tehran. The US strategy made that alliance inevitable! Iraq did not move in Iran’s direction. That’s baloney. Washington pushed Iraq into Iran’s arms. Everyone knows this.
So, now what? So now the Obama team wants a “do over”? Is that it?
There are no do overs in history. The sectarian war the US initiated and promoted with its blistering counterinsurgency strategy–which involved massive ethnic cleansing of Sunnis in Baghdad behind the phony “surge” BS– changed the complexion of the country for good. There’s no going back. What’s done is done. Baghdad is Shia and will remain Shia. And that means there’s going to be some connection with Tehran. So, if the Obama people intend to roll back Iran’s influence, then they probably have something else in mind. And they DO have something else in mind. They want to partition the country consistent with an Israeli plan that was concocted more than three decades ago. The plan was the brainstorm of Oded Yinon who saw Iraq as a serious threat to Israel’s hegemonic aspirations, so he cooked up a plan to remedy the problem. Here’s a blurb from Yinon’s primary work titled, “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”, which is the roadmap that will be used to divide Iraq:

“Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.” (A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties, Oded Yinon, monabaker.com)

Repeat: “Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon.”
This is the plan. The United States does not benefit from this plan. The United States does not benefit from a fragmented, Balkanized, broken Iraq. The oil giants are already extracting as much oil as they want. Iraqi oil is, once again, denominated in dollars not euros. Iraq poses no national security threat to the US. US war planners already got what they want. There’s no reason to go back and cause more trouble, to restart the war, to tear the country apart, and to split it into pieces. The only reason to dissolve Iraq, is Israel. Israel does not want a unified Iraq. Israel does not want an Iraq that can stand on its own two feet. Israel wants to make sure that Iraq never remerges as a regional power. And there’s only one way to achieve that goal, that is, to follow Yinon’s prescription of “breaking up Iraq …along ethnic/religious lines …so, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul.”
This is the blueprint the Obama administration is following. The US gains nothing from this plan. It’s all for Israel.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/20/its-all-for-israel/
 
kawilt said:
WHO'S THE WINNER IN THIS CLUSTER F....k?


Splitting up Iraq

It’s all for Israel
by MIKE WHITNEY

“It is no longer plausible to argue that ISIS was a result of unintentional screw ups by the US. It is a clear part of a US strategy to break up the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hezbollah alliance. Now that strategy may prove to be a total failure and end up backfiring, but make no mistake, ISIS IS the strategy.”

- Lysander, Comments line, Moon of Alabama

“US imperialism has been the principal instigator of sectarianism in the region, from its divide-and-conquer strategy in the war and occupation in Iraq, to the fomenting of sectarian civil war to topple Assad in Syria. Its cynical support for Sunni Islamist insurgents in Syria, while backing a Shiite sectarian regime across the border in Iraq to suppress these very same forces, has brought the entire Middle East to what a United Nations panel on Syria warned Tuesday was the “cusp of a regional war.”

-
Click to expand...


What a load of shit. The entire article is an anti-American/anti-Israel paranoid left wing circle jerk.

The US spent 8 years, a trillion dollars and 5000 lives to keep Iraq unified but now it wants to break it up? And all for the benefit of Israel, of course. Antisemitism at its finest. LMFAO

And of course they have to throw in a dig at US imperialism, blaming it for sectarian conflict that has been inherent in the region for 1400 years. The last I checked, that's longer than the US has existed. LOL

The reason for the sectarian divide in the region - for anyone interested in the truth, that is - is right before your eyes: it's the Quran, stupid!

Utter horseshit.

CBS
 
Goodness, I really touched a nerve. We spent a trillion dollars and 5000 lives to keep Iraq UNIFIED? And now I have committed the ultimate sin. ANTI-SEMITISM.:rolleyes:
I don't agree with everything the article said, but I do agree with a great deal of it. I'll try and take time later to expand on this, IF your interested. But it seems CBS that you have a pretty small box you live in.:)
 
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kawilt said:
Goodness, I really touched a nerve. We spent a trillion dollars and 5000 lives to keep Iraq UNIFIED? And now I have committed the ultimate sin. ANTI-SEMITISM.:rolleyes:
I don't agree with everything the article said, but I do agree with a great deal of it. I'll try and take time later to expand on this, IF your interested. But it seems CBS that you have a pretty small box you live in.:)
Click to expand...


I didn't say you were antisemitic. The author certainly is, just like most of the anti-Israel left. It's always about those pesky Jews, dontcha know!

Bottom line: my comments were directed at the author. It wasn't meant to be personal, Kawilt. Apologies if you took it that way.
 
Thank you CBS. I did not take it personally. Some of the author's comments were certainly slanted, I would agree. But everybody seems to tip toe around Israel. It doesn't seem as if one can discuss Israel's involvement in the middle east in a negative manner without being attacked as anti-semitic. I think you know as well as I, who pulls who's strings in Washington when it comes to the middle east, or anywhere that Israel has an interest, including here in this country. Israel is not a friend of ours CBS, that is, a friend in the true sense of the word. Anybody can research the espionage they have carried out against us or just ask the living survivors or the families of the USS Liberty. Israel is most certainly involved in every decision that is made regarding the middle east.
 
kawilt said:
I think you know as well as I, who pulls who's strings in Washington when it comes to the middle east, or anywhere that Israel has an interest, including here in this country.
Click to expand...



Israel has a lot of influence in the US. There's no question about that. But pull the strings? If that were true, the US would have attacked Iran several years ago. And Israel's influence has been greatly diminished since Obama took office.

Israel is not a friend of ours CBS, that is, a friend in the true sense of the word. Anybody can research the espionage they have carried out against us or just ask the living survivors or the families of the USS Liberty.
Click to expand...



I totally disagree with this. Israel is as much a friend to the US as Britain or Canada. Espionage is part and parcel of being a sovereign nation. You don't think the US spies on its friends? Or Canada doesn't spy on the US? Hell, the US spies on everybody, including its own citizens. They're all spying on each other - only when Israel does it, it's viewed as a betrayal by someone who is supposed to be a friend. It's that old double standard.


Regarding the survivors of the Liberty's "beliefs," a US government inquiry concluded the attack was a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the ship's identity during the Six-Day War. Friendly fire, if you will. And friendly fire is something the US knows all too well, having invented the term.

Israel is most certainly involved in every decision that is made regarding the middle east.
Click to expand...



Involved, yes. Do they always get their way? Hardly. If they did, there would be a new government in Tehran instead of Baghdad.


 
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