Every week on Monday morning , the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question:Which Should America Choose - Shi'ites, Sunnis or Neither?
The Independent Sentinel: We need to bomb ISIS. We should have bombed them a month ago when they were on the Syria-Iraq border. They must be stopped. They present an existential threat to the United States and her allies. I don't view it as taking sides. We need to halt or slow their advance. I don't care about Sunnis. Shias - I care about whoever threatens the US and Israel. I'd like to see us arm the Kurds to the hilt. We most definitely should not work with Iran - that's an insane idea.
Robert Avrech, Seraphic Secret: I spoke to an Israeli intelligence officer the other day and asked what the IDF was thinking about the Sunni-Shia war. His response was simple and instructive: "They have been killing each other for centuries. There is no side to pick. Only pinpoint strategic and tactical opportunities from which to choose. For Israel this might be a good time to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities. We have written off America under Obama. We will do it ourselves. Watch the skies.”
GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD :Great Satan's side should be against the Artist Formerly Known As al Qaeda In Iraq.
Easier said than done - see, ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) is essentially the “lead dog” of a larger Sunni militant coalition.
ISIS has been fighting in conjunction with a number of other Iraqi Sunni militant groups. Effectively the entire rogue’s gallery of Sunni militias from the 2006-2008 civil war have been revived by Prime Minister Maliki’s alienation of the Sunni Arab community since 2011. AQI, the Naqshbandis, the Ba’th, Jaysh al-Muhammad, Ansar al-Sunnah, and all of the rest are back in operation in Iraq, in at least tacit cooperation with a number of Sunni tribes.
Of greatest importance, we need to recognize that the Iraqi Security Forces are fast becoming little more than a Shia militia. This trend began 3-4 years ago when Prime Minister Maliki began to push Sunni and Kurdish officers out of the armed forces, to replace them with loyal Shia officers. As a result, even before the current debacle, the ISF had become far more Shia than it had been, with fewer and fewer Sunnis and Kurds. Even before the dramatic events of last week, most Sunnis and Kurds referred to the ISF as “Maliki’s militia.”
Since last Tuesday, we have seen large numbers of Sunni Arab and Kurdish soldiers desert the ISF, leaving an even more homogeneously Shia force. There are still Sunnis and Kurds in the ranks and in the officer corps, but that seems likely to dissipate over time.
The selective and careful use of air assets is appropriate and necessary to blunt the advance and bottle up elements into isolated pockets if possible, or break the lines of supply and command, at minimum.
With Syrian, US, Iranian forces (and possibly others, the Saudis) already in the airspace defined areas of operation and rules of engagement need to quickly come about. Base our air assets in Kurdistan and hit the staging areas and logistics centers. Refine the approach to personality/decapitation tactics after intel is back on its feet. Make the Sunnis choose between a state and a state of war.
JoshuaPundit: Just to show you what sort of creature we elected, this president and his dysfunctional team think they can choose both! On the one hand Secretary Kerry is asking congress for half a billion of your tax dollars to arm and train 'the Syrian Rebels', which is exactly how ISIS got so strong.
At the same time, we now have over 600 'advisers' in Iraq fighting against ISIS,which means we're fighting on the same side as Assad, Hezbollah, Iran and Moqtaddah al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, all of them with substantial American blood on their hands to help Iran hang on to the colony under Maliki we handed them at the cost of a trillion dollars and over 4,000 lives. We're already working with the Iranians, we're simply using Maliki as an intermediary. And we're also bolstering Putin's status, of course, who just sent Maliki a dozen Sukhoi-25 fighter planes.
Which also pits us against our other allies the Saudis, Qatar and the other QCE countries who are arming, funding and training the Syrian rebels!
The only consistent policy in the Middle East this president and his minions have is hysterics when Israelis builds houses for their people and support and appeasement of Islamists at home and abroad. These folks could screw up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and turn it into something sickening and lethal. Literally everything they touch turns to crap.
The situation in the Middle East is the same story. Barack Hussein Obama was sold to the American people as the smartest guy in the room ( with Joe Biden for - wait for it - gravitas) who was going to restore good relations with all our allies. Remember that? The reality is that none of our allies trust us today, and both they and our adversaries justifiably regard this president as a bumbling. duplicitous weakling whose word and commitments are worthless.
That's a big part of the problem, by the way. Several people in this Forum have mentioned putting bases in Kurdistan. That would have worked just fine when we still occupied the country and the Kurds begged us to do it. Instead, President George W. Bush sold them out for Maliki and the likes of Turkey's Tayyip Erdoğan and actually pulled our military out of position so the Turks could bomb their villages and sent troops across the border to rape and pillage. And President Obama responded to the complaints of the Kurds and Sunnis as Maliki purged them from the military, stole elections and reneged on the federation agreement with total indifference. Seeing as we're helping Maliki and the Iranians, does anyone think the Kurds trust us now? Neither do the Sunnis, after we used them in the Awakening Movement to fight al-Qaeda and then let Maliki and the Shi'tes have their way with them after we left. And what are the odds that we're actually going to arm the Kurds or put bases there when our new 'allies' Iran and Maliki as well as Obama's BFF Tayipp Erdoğan are against it?
This is harsh stuff, but it's reality. We have no business picking sides in this conflict when our president's actions have already ensured that we lose out either way. In fact, the one successful path is to do absolutely nothing:
Both sides love carnage and a war to the knife for Allah, and since Iran now has boots on the ground, we can sit back and watch as they savage each other. The last time it happened, an 8 year bloodbath back in the 1980's, there were over a million battlefield deaths and both sides were weakened ..at least until we stupidly took Saddam Hussein out of the equation, the regional counterweight to Iran.The idea of the Iranians, Hezbollah, the Mahdi Army and ISIS engaging in this fashion is fine with me and as ISIS is going to be a tough nut to crack, Iran could end up being tangled in Syria and Iraq for years.
Of course, this nonsense with Iraq is causing us to ignore our real security problem in the region, Iran's rogue nuclear program. The Iranian nuclear talks are stalled, of course, while the Ayatollahs play for time. So the major threat to our security in the region isn't being addressed at all, because they're playing Our Dear Leader and John Kerry like Jimi Hendrix used to play a stratocaster.
There is, of course, a perfectly good solution to dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions:
We now have two successive presidents who have known full well what the Ayatollahs were up to and failed to do anything about it, even though both of them did a lot of chest thumping. That's the main threat to U.S. security we have in the region, and the job is going to be a lot more costly and destructive because of their delays and their failure.
At this point both the Iranians and our allies know that Barack Hussein Obama isn't going to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. In fact, he probably welcomes the idea. Our best hope is that (a)either the Iranians get tangled up enough in Iraq and Syria to delay things, (B)this president is either impeached or out of office before things get critical or (c) one of our allies decides enough is enough and does the job for us.
I say we choose neither,
The Razor: There is no way we should get involved – at least until ISIS is in the process of attacking American interests abroad or at home. Given our intelligence failures, which amazes me considering how much data we scoop up through electronic surveillance, it may be impossible to know this until it is too late. Unfortunately that means suffering an attack. But until that attack happens we should let the Sunnis and Shi’a do what they do best: kill each other. Supporting one side just makes us a target for both sides (if that sounds contradictory just look at what happened in Afghanistan when our attacks on the Taliban were decried as attacks on civilians by the Afghani president Hamid Karzai.)
A pox on both their houses.
Ask Marion : I keep wrestling with this question and myself regarding it… What should we do in Iraq? Who should we support? How does it affect the Middle East… Israel? And what do we owe those who died or have lifetime severe injuries because of their service… and do we subject more troops to the same?
The more I think about, the more torn I am! But I think we have already jumped the shark when we pulled out without leaving enough troops and needed assistance to help the Iraqis do what they needed to do to hold the line and to become self-sustaining in the areas of defense and maintaining a Democratic nation.
After listening to all the experts, the general consensus seems to be that it is too late unless we want to start from scratch… a new full offensive, for which there is now support.
So at this point with all the internal problems we have I think we should maintain a low profile and what little we do offer or decide to do should be done with forethought and clarity… instead of sending advisers, drones, air support or anything else without a plan.
As Brigitte Gabrielle says:
Our elected and appointed officials must come to terms with the doctrinal basis for jihad so we can properly and effectively defend America, protect American lives and face our enemies.
So, what should we do in Iraq? We need to pray for Israel and help them survive. We should have stopped Obama from pulling out of both Iraq (and Afghanistan) completely… and now we, the Middle East and the rest of the world will pay for our foolishness and weakness as the radicals have been emboldened to move forward with their worldwide Islamic Caliphate… which has always been their goal.
The Glittering Eye : Neither. Recently our track record has been very poor--either picking the wrong factions or the wrong individuals to back. We should've swallowed hard and allowed Qaddafi to prevail in Libya, the military in Egypt, and Assad in Syria. Instead we've got chaos in Libya, less influence than we had in Egypt, increased carnage in Syria, and Iraq is now on the verge of collapse.
Rather than siding with factions or individuals we should be doing what little we can (and it's admittedly little) to foster institutions in the countries of MENA. Institutions like a free press and an independent court.
At the very least we need to stop supporting Islamists.
Well, there you have it.
Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.
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