Posted on 09/12/2014 12:20:47 PM PDT by Kaslin
The international community is slowly if hesitantly coming around to joining the global fight on terror. Last week, for example, the Arab League tepidly endorsed a joint resolution to fight the terrorist organization ISIS. At minimum, this was a formal recognition that the Arab League and the United States have mutually beneficial interests and goals in seeing this army of murderers wiped off the face of the earth.
At the same time, Secretary of State John Kerry has been in the Middle East attempting to galvanize international support for the president’s 4-pronged strategy to combat ISIS, which was outlined Wednesday night in a primetime television address. To that end, he recently met with foreign ministers from nearly a dozen Arab nations, all of whom (except Turkey) signed a communiqué to “do their share” in vanquishing this threat, according to the New York Times:
Arab nations vowed on Thursday to “do their share” to confront and ultimately destroy the Sunni extremist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The promise came after the nations’ foreign ministers met here behind closed doors with Secretary of State John Kerry. A joint communiqué issued by the United States and 10 Arab states endorsed a broad strategy to stop the flow of volunteers to ISIS, curtail its financing and provide aid to communities that had been “brutalized” by the militants.
It also called for a coordinated military campaign in which nations would contribute “as appropriate.” Mr. Kerry, who was the only Western foreign minister at the meetings here, sought to use the talks to mobilize support against ISIS, a day after President Obama declared that the United States was prepared to carry out airstrikes in Syria in an effort to degrade and eventually defeat the Sunni militants. None of the Arab participants said precisely what they would do, and it remained unclear whether any would join the United States in mounting the airstrikes.
As outlined by the president on Wednesday night, the United States will not commit ground troops to the region. The president is thus relying on the peshmerga and other ground forces to take the fight to ISIS. But what role, it's worth asking, will Arab nations have in this joint undertaking? More details from the communiqué:
The communiqué said that the participants had discussed a strategy to “destroy” ISIS “wherever it is, including in both Iraq and Syria.”
It said steps would be taken to stop the flow of foreign fighters and money to ISIS, repudiate the group’s “hateful ideology” and provide aid to rebuild affected communities.
The communiqué made no explicit mention of training Syrian rebels; rather, it said that the signatories would join “in the many aspects of a coordinated military campaign.”
Even if the Arab world does not commit wholesale to this fight, stopping the flow of arms, personnel, and cash to ISIS terrorists is essential -- and not unrelated -- to defeating them. After all, we learned just today that ISIS’ ranks have swelled to perhaps as many as 31,500, way above the initial estimates the intelligence community first furnished us with.
Having these nation states on board, then, is a small yet significant step towards cutting off and ostracizing these butchers. Put simply, as the president keeps reminding us, their cooperation will go a long way.
Making deals with Arab states. What could go wrong?
Sure they will. I really doubt they got 10.
It better go ALL the way. America is sick and tired of spending trillions of dollars and wasting thousands of US lives fighting (Not Islamic) Muslims in various countries for better than a decade.
Let these towel heads handle their own.
Ditto.
IF they really got 10 Arab Nations....
and IF they really did their share...
and IF they hung in there for the duration....
to be fair...that would be awesome.
If I ate fruitloops and was then able to crap rainbows...that would be awesome too.
;)
In this instance, (though for different reasons)I agree with the president. Something I have rarely stated since 2008. I agree that the Arab and Middle Eastern countries need to be the ones doing the majority of fighting and dying in this battle. If not, no matter what we do over there, success or failure, the Muslims will only despise us more, forgetting the bigger reasons why we came there. We have done enough ‘trainning’ for the iraqis, only to have scores of them turn tail and run when confronted with ISIS. I haven’t forgotten all those Green Zone murders and assaults, neither have most people.
They supply the money (or oil) and we supply the blood. Seems fair.
Better than that, let the Chinese and Japanese and other SE Asians handle it. They get most of the middle-east oil now. We don’t need their oil. China is expanding business assets all over the world without firing a bullet or spending a single
Yuan in middle-east fighting. Whereas we are upto our eyeballs in debt and borrowing more every minute. We are following exact same path followed by other great empires of past who kept on spending on military with a BANKRUPT TREASURY and met their demise.
Why isn’t the UN around? Especially regarding Syria??
Their support is a yard wide and half an inch deep. I wouldn’t count on them for very much.
The Useless Nations? You’re joking, aren’t ya?
History is pretty straight forward.
As Hillary’s husband bemoaned the fact it was GWB, not BJC, who got to shine in the aftermath of 9/11, she must think it’s an unfair world where John Kerry gets to deal with the aftermath of journalist beheadings.
By declaring themselves the new caliphate, ISIS basically declared every other Muslim government illegitimate. That may draw angry Jihadists from around the world to their cause, but it’s also going to draw fire from those governments. I say sit back and pass the popcorn.
We should provide zero aid in rebuilding areas ISIS destroys. It was bad enough with Colin Powell’s crap of “we break it we fix it”. We should just break things when it becomes necessary. But now Obama has expanded it to say “others break it and we fix it”?
Just hell no.
John Kerry-Heinz and His Arrogance along with his gay administration will believe anything while not acknowledging Islam’s basic tenet of “tell the infidels what they want to hear and kill them later”.
Drop a big enough bomb and you kill all the snakes.
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