Posted on 09/11/2014 9:40:28 PM PDT by nathanbedford
Will bombing Isis, like the Iraq war, prove to be the wrong "war" against the wrong enemy?
America is war weary and will support our action against Isis for a short time and only so long as it is conducted by limited means, that is, without substantial casualties. In effect, America under the leadership of Barack Obama supports airstrikes and no more. What will this accomplish?
While emotionally satisfying to Americans enraged at the horror of their compatriots being decapitated before their eyes, these strikes are very unlikely to accomplish the destruction of Isis or the worldwide Islamic terrorist jihad. They then might be tactically necessary under the present emergent circumstances to deprive Isis of its geographical base, but it will have little long-term strategic value in the war involving terrorism.
We invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan because we conceived of the war on terror in traditional two-dimensional terms. We saw the theater of war as a checkerboard in which we take and hold geography. We heard ourselves say, "we have to fight them over there so they don't attack us over here." We heard ourselves say, "we have to deprive Al Qaeda of a base from which to launch attacks." We did not consider that 19 terrorists armed with box cutters did not need a geographical base from which to organize and launch those attacks on 9/11.
Compare our present dilemma to this ringing declaration:
You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
(Winston Churchill - May 13, 1940, his address to the House of Commons upon taking up his duties as Prime Minister during the calamitous days of the fall of France).
I ask the reader, what is Barack Obama's policy? I ask, what is Barack Obama's aim? Surely, no one can confidently state that Barack Obama's aim is victory over the monstrous tyranny of aggressive Islam; no one can feel confident that his policy is to wage war to gain that end.
Obama has no policy that is identifiable because he is no stated aim and not even an understanding that we are at war or who the enemy might be. At a time that begs for Churchillian clarity we get duplicity. As a proximate result of a failure of policy, that is a failure to conceive a strategy in the von Clausewitz sense, America is bounding off to bomb Isis while it ignores a very real threat next-door.
Bombing Isis might well be a necessary battle tactic in this emergency but it is not a strategy.
There is a development immediately next-door to Iraq which will have profound long-term strategic implications for American survival and it is being ignored. If Iran gets the atomic bomb it will become an existential threat to the United States of American; it will fundamentally alter the balance of power in the Persian Gulf; it will disrupt oil supplies around the world and render oil a first use weapon of terrorism; it will ignite a nuclear arms race in that region; it will expose the United States to nuclear terror within the homeland.
Thus have we utterly mistaken the real threat to the very survival of the United States as a democratic republic. Without arguing in detail, I submit that a few atomic explosions in random American cities could easily bring us to our knees and into submission to sharia. We have an open southern border, we have Iran with the atomic bomb only inches from its fingertips, we have Iran's Association with terrorists but we, and certainly this administration, cannot come to the conclusion that Iran, rather than Isis, is the more dangerous threat. We cannot define the real enemy, we cannot even acknowledge that there is an enemy by name, we cannot even define the nature of the undertaking as "war."
The military challenge of taking out Iran's nuclear program might be daunting but it is at least within the realm of reasonable expectations. There can be no reasonable expectation that bombing the hell out of Isis will eliminate the international threat of Islamic terrorism. It is reasonable to expect that, known difficulties accepted, a well-planned and well executed mission against Iran can eliminate its nuclear potential.
While Obama dithers and fumbles over Isis in Iraq, the existential threat to America posed by Iran is being ignored to our mortal peril.
Guerrilla operations require local support. Liquidate the local Sunni Arab population, and that support goes away. This was how Saddam dealt with Shiite and Kurdish revolts. The Kurds and the Shiites will probably do something similar with the Sunni Arabs if GI's don't get involved on the ground.
Maliki was accused of being too sectarian. He wasn't really all that. Sure, he handed all the goodies to Shiites. But he really did not do much apart from turning a blind eye to very occasional Shiite militia attacks on Sunni Arabs. In contrast, Saddam killed an estimated million people to forestall plots against him. If some other country wants to play armed social worker, that's certainly its prerogative. I think we've wasted lost too many good Republicans and Christians in Iraq. It's time to let the natives do what they have to do. If Iraq's and Syria's Sunni Arabs have to find a new home in the gulf region, so be it.
Exactly! ISIS are our out of control proxies, we will cattle prod them, but nothing more. Our CIA is using back fires to fight the forest fire that is Russia and Iran, this particular back fire is burning a little to hot so needs a minor dousing. When convenient they will rebrand to “moderates”.
I sometimes wonder if Obama is in on the strategy or just ignorantly going along for the ride.
If that happened, Mecca would be nuked in response. If the administration refused, there would be riots until it was done, and nothing would hold the American people back. It would seriously be a bridge too far - people would snap. Liberalism would die once and for all, no doubt with a lot of liberals going down with it, and no doubt in a very ugly way, but it would happen.
But that's already been analyzed - and it's the ONLY reason you haven't seen any nukes going off here.
The Taliban are coming back to Afghanistan because the Pashtun population there is feeding them. If the Hazaras, the Tajiks and the Uzbeks had been relocated to the border area, they would have liquidated any Pashtuns who came back to reclaim their lands. Think Hutus vs Tutsis.
You mean minority. It is the majority sect in Syria, but Assad is trying to drive them out of the country, or at least enough so as to reduce their ability to mount a successful revolt against him. Ultimately, he needs to push 10m Sunni Arabs out of Syria (or kill them, with Russia and China warding off any Western military operations against him).
CIA director Brennan, is a confirmed muslim. ISIS is the direct extension of Our, supposed mid-east covered over and lied about, foreign policy. The Bengazi rip- off, was a key link to what is happening now. Prior to that, the Egyptian debacle with the Muslim Brotherhood, was the first real outward step, of establishing a total Caliphate of the arab states. Hitler did exactly the same dynamics, in Europe.
I am not convinced that, for all of O’s talk about degrading them, he has any intention of it. They are doing what they are supposed to do, they are just creating a PR problem in the process that has to be addressed.
His response will be some pin-pricks to re-direct them. That, and arm more rebels who are not substantially different than ISIS. I don’t think their caliphate bothers him as long as they do it without creating PR problems for him.
O is not operating on the same wavelength as the rest of us. He and we are not on the same side. But he can’t declare himself, so he walks a tightrope and speaks in language that can be understood three different ways by three different audiences. And he takes actions meant to muddy the water rather than clarify it.
I am sad to say that this is my view. I hope someone can convince me I’m wrong.
"In Iraq, Shiites are a majority."
forget isis a second.
nuke mecca.
it will have a massive demoralizing impact on all of these jihad jawas.
they will have to recognize that allah allowed their most holy site to be completely and utterly destroyed, by infidels, no less. allah is respinsible for all good and bad, it is his will. let them contemplate that while watching the crater mecca smoking up to heaven.
The Saudi financed and directed the attacks of 9/11 2001. They placed an operative in the White House, an illegal alien Muslim terrorist. The Republican Party is fully on board with this treason.
Anyone who “analyzes” the thinking of “Obama” without recognizing these facts is in a coma.
You lost me on your first sentence when you erroneously referred to Iraq as “the wrong war,” apparently presuming that we would accept that as fact.
In truth, Iraq was not a “wrong war, “ but rather an unfinished war that did not just conveniently disappear when political and public will was proven too soft for a hard task. We closed our eyes, and found to our dismay, when tumult again demanded our attention, that willful blindness leads to a catastrophic mess.
I wrote a vanity which I called my mea culpa as early as November 4, 2006 which I extended August 22, 2011. Here are those two replies in opposite order which stand as my declaration why the Iraq war was an utter failure and the greatest foreign policy mistake since Vietnam:
So This Is How Iraq Ends, in Futility, Bitterness, and Recrimination
After nearly 5000 body bags, tens of thousands of limbs, and $1 trillion, Obama is skedaddling from Iraq, vainly attempting to put the best face on the ignominy of our departure which is demanded by the very Iraqi nation we built. A war, originally started to make us safe from weapons of mass destruction, was waged against a psychotic dictator who had no such weapons. We succeeded in regime change, which was a good thing and proceeded to build a nation, which was a futile endeavor. Somehow, we lost sight of our national strategic interests for which we sacrificed our blood and treasure.
Today, we are facing a new Islamist crescent, dominated by Iran, and running from Pakistan nearly to the Atlantic shores of northern Africa. One of these nations is in possession of nuclear weapons and a second, even more fanatical than the other, will soon be possessed of such a weapon and poses a real existential danger to the security of the United States. The original justification for the war, to prevent Iraq from building an atomic bomb and passing it off to terrorists who would smuggle it into America and destroy one or more of our cities, is even more threatening today than it was the day before we commenced hostilities.
Whatever gains we have made in making the American people safer have been achieved almost exclusively by virtue of national technical means and by old-fashioned spy vs. spy sleuthing.
Our national security posture is substantially weaker. The nation has contributed to its own bankruptcy by squandering trillions of dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan. The war has estranged us from Europe and left us vulnerable to attack through that flank. It has aroused and energized the Arab street. The Mexican border remains a backdoor open to infiltration by terrorists carrying weapons of mass destruction as small as a mason jar full of germs. At the other end of the spectrum, Iran is at the verge of obtaining an atomic weapon and the means to explode it in the heavens over the homeland which could knock out our electric grids and leave tens of millions to die of thirst and starvation because they would be beyond the nation's power to succor them.
Whatever chance we had to prevent Iran from getting the bomb was always limited to a military strike and that option was swallowed up in the sands of Iraq.
Out of bitterness and frustration, we have turned upon one another in recrimination, even blaming John McCain of all people.
As a result of the American electorate's frustration with the war, Republicans were driven from office on Capitol Hill just days after the piece quoted below was written and they were later driven from the Oval Office. Today, we are ruled over by a potential tyrant whose allegiance to this country is dubious. His elevation to the highest office in the world could not have happened without our involvement in Iraq.
The following is a post which I first put up on these boards on November 4, 2006. As it says at the foot of the post, I invite your reaction. I do not repost this out of vanity but out of frustration and an aching heart. Above all, I ask what have we learned and where are we going?
Here is the piece:
Before the invasion I wrote that "God help me" I wanted the invasion to begin as soon as possible before the inspection regime or the French could so undermine the administration that the war could not be started.
Unlike these treacherous neocons, I will admit that I was wrong. In my own defense I can say, for what it's worth, that I was never seduced by the idea of imposing Wilsonian democracy on Iraq, although I of course would not have spurned it, but I saw the war in what I arrogantly believed were grown up and real world considerations of geopolitics. I wanted forward bases in the Mideast from which to strike at Syria and Iran if intimidation alone did not work. I wanted us to get all our hands on the oil fields to deprive Muslim terrorists of petrodollars with which to buy weapons of mass destruction. I wanted us to demonstrate to the Muslim world that no leader could sleep safe if he played a double game with America. I wanted to so intimidate the Muslim world with our military prowess that they themselves would turn against the terrorists in their midst because I believed, and still believe, that the only way we ultimately can win this war is to turn the sane Muslims against the crazies. And, of course, I wanted a regime change as the only effective defense against WMD's in Iraq. My mistake, and I believe Bush's, was to underestimate the tenacity of the Muslim belief system and to see the war in a two dimensional geographical box, like a game of checkers, where squares were to be taken and held.
Not only was I wrong but the result has been calamitous and every one of the "strategic" reasons for waging war in Iraq have been stood on its head. I suspect that the main reason there has been no terrorist attack on the heartland is because Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, as well as Iran, are quite content to see America founder in Iraq. Iran, likewise, is the big winner from all of this as it moves closer to upsetting the entire balance of power in the Middle East when it acquires the bomb and perhaps fashions a Shi'ite Crescent running to the Mediterranean Sea. I believe my error came out of the false understanding of the nature of the global intergenerational war against terrorism: that somehow it was a war which could be conceived of in geographical terms. It is not-- although if it is lost the ultimate impact will be geographical. This is a war for the soul of Islam and we must not lose our own souls before we can save theirs.
Perhaps the very worst legacy of this whole Irak tragedy is that we are a daily demonstrating to the world that we are presently incapable of winning asymmetrical wars of terrorism. The Israelis just proved that in Lebanon. The people in Afghanistan are beginning to understand it. The tide in the Muslim world is rising against us as their fear drains away. So the goal of saving the soul of Islam has been made more elusive.
To compound the catastrophe, the "socialist" world of Cuba and Venezuela, Russia and China can read the daily events in Iraq and are emboldened as they have not been since the first Iraq war and seem eager to make mischief 1960s style.
Meanwhile, we've increased the danger of losing our own soul as defined as the will to win. Western Europe already lacks it and half of America possesses an anemic red blood count. Another tragedy of the Iraq war might will be to cause the installation of a Democrat regime in America which will align itself with the appeasers in Europe and so fatally succumb to jihad. The danger is as near as next Tuesday when, if the Republicans suffer a stinging repudiation of the polls, Bush might be left in as feckless a state as Gerald Ford was during the final pathetic agony of Vietnam.
Our dilemma is that we cannot win in Iraq and we cannot abandon it. We cannot win until we learn how to fight asymmetrical insurgencies against our occupation. We show no evidence that we have any idea how to do this at a price America is willing to pay. The training up of Iraqi forces, especially the police, is clearly a failure. So we are mired in a situation that spills our blood and empties our treasury and turns our friends against us. Meanwhile, the existential threat against America, represented by Iran's possession of a nuclear weapon which it passes off to terrorists to explode in the heartland, grows daily closer to reality. Our efforts in Iraq have so attenuated our military force that we probably cannot mount an invasion and air power alone probably cannot interdict Iran's nuclear program. This is well known to the whole world and especially to Iran so our ability to intimidate the Iranians into good behavior has bled into the sands of Iraq along with the Bush Doctrine.
Soon it will be fashionable even in conservative circles to blame Bush just as the neocons now are doing so ignominiously. My belief is that the miscalculation was to presume that the Iraqis, read Muslims, would behave rationally when presented with the opportunity for self-determination and democracy. It is not really that we made fatal tactical military mistakes in Iraq which we can lay at the feet of Bush or Rumsfeld, rather it is the nature of the traditional Muslim society that caused all of this bloodshed to be inevitable. Iraq has revealed that America has no stomach for the pain which must be endured to see such a traditional Muslim society through to Western democratic values.
Asymmetrical warfare works against armies of occupation but these tactics do not work against 21st-century Blitzkrieg, American-style. I fear that the American military will engage in another Vietnam style soul-searching and draw the wrong conclusion, that military force does not work at all in the war against terrorism. I am tempted, therefore, to argue that it was the occupation and not the war itself which was the bridge too far. After Iraq, I am humble enough to admit and perhaps it is I who misses the lesson.
I am well aware that new military adventures will be virtually impossible to sell until the inevitable happens: a strike is made against the homeland. If Al Qaeda strikes with anything less than a mortal blow, ie. a series of nuclear explosions, America might yet be able to find its finest hour. But strike it must if Al Qaeda intends fulfill its ambitions. God grant that they settle for half a loaf with an intensity level not exceeding 911.
We must fashion a new policy, a new strategy for winning this intergenerational worldwide war against a portion of 1.4 billion Muslims who inhabit the earth. We must turn rational Islam against this jihad or we will perish because we will rot from the inside out or we will simply surrender after our cities are turned into glass. We cannot hope to prevail if we eschew all military operations as ultimately counterproductive. We must find what works. Above all, we must not lose our soul.
Thanks of re-posting this; your posts are one of the reasons I keep coming back to Free Republic.
We've wasted loads of money supporting islamic nutjobs (now it's the Kurds) and leaving Christians to perish in the Middle east. We can't be seen helping Christians because that would be racist or intolerant or whatever. So we support their enemies in the Middle East and we bombed them in Serbia. Does this make sense?
Terrorists detonate an atomic bomb in Cincinnati which had been smuggled across the Mexican border. Mexican officials where needed have been easily bribed. A scant hour before the detonation a notice appears on the Internet warning of time and city for the destination in order to gain credibility. The notice demands that America submit to sharia or a second city will be bombed within three days.
The United States government has no idea whether the bomb was manufactured in North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, Russia or elsewhere. The United States government has no idea of the identity of the terrorists who are small in number and maintain strict security. The government is unable to assure the American people that the next city can be saved.
Within three days a second bomb explodes in Dallas and a similar message appears on the Internet. Americans are furious but a large minority of Americans, especially mothers, are terrified and demand that the government accede to the terrorists' demands. The President of the United States speaks to the nation for a second time and declares again that the United States will never surrender to terrorism but his assurances ring hollow.
A third bomb explodes. The government has no recourse. It does not know which set of international players is responsible, it does not know whom to bomb. It cannot identify the terrorists who in any case have committed suicide. It threatens to bomb Mecca and Medina but the Saudi government makes a declaration of surrender to the United States and invites American troops to occupy the country to prove that they are innocent. The cries in America for surrender to sharia grow exponentially.
A fourth bomb explodes in Philadelphia and America surrenders.
Satellites, ICBMs, thermonuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, and all the modern panoply of America's wonder weapons avail the world's superpower nothing. It does not know how to defend itself or whom to defend itself against. It cannot control the fear swelling within its own population because it cannot spare its own population from destruction.
Rightists bluster and demand that Muslim countries be vaporized but in this scenario it does not matter whether Muslim lands are struck with atomic weapons are not because the endgame in the homeland remains the same. The terrorists, seeking Armageddon as a theological goal, are indifferent to threats or even to actual retaliation. They seek their own endgame.
I share the same sentiment. Most posts I scan; NB's I read every word in a deliberate manner.
That is because there is no military solution, only political.
Obama has picked General Allen to head up the effort. During the 2007/2008 surge, General Petraeus killed the Sunni and General Allen used diplomacy and bribes to get Sunni to shift their alligeince to the central govt and he was very successful. Later, Obama would give Allen the same job in Afghanistan trying to shift the Taliban.
The strength of ISIS in Iraq flows from the Sunni. The Sunni support ISIS because they have been shut out in Iraq. The Kurds have also been shut out.
The promises made to the Sunni in 2007 and 2008 about jobs in the govt and the military were slowly broken and they were purged. It is also said that the oil revenue that was supposed to go to the Sunni was reduced.
So it is better to reform the central govt to include Sunni and Kurds. No doubt, Gen Allen will have to kill some Sunni but also use his experience working with the Sunni.
If you want a military solution to the problem you will have to put US troop levels in Iraq the same as they were in the 2007/08 surge. Spend 2 more trillion dollars, and get a lot of Americans killed and maimed.
Here's what you need to do: Impeach Obama, put the NeoCons in charge(Cheney as prez, Bill Kristol as VP, and Paul Wolfowitz as SecDef). Invade, conquer, and hold for decades.
Except for the awesome ability of our special forces and our CAS pilots, I’d say that the military side of this is a doomed mission. However, having met an upper echelon Kurd commander, and knowing that the Kurds truly do want independence and see it just around the corner, I’d say that the SpecOps community could pull this off.
The real danger is Obama then interfering to make the mission fail. He’ll see “collateral civilian casualties” as an excuse any time he wants to manipulate the close air support into being useless. CAS is the ultimate key.
America has never lost a war that was properly “Declared” and likewise has never won a war that we were not willing to go through the proper channels to “Declare”.
The US is not even willing to consider any kind of declaration of war in this situation. Therefore the chances of achieving a military victory are nil.
Obama is not willing to call this a war and is not willing or able to define either our actual mission or the terms upon which we can declare victory.
How can we ask our troops to give their lives to achieve undefined goals and provide them with no hope for victory?
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