Posted on 06/09/2015 2:26:45 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The feeling is growing in the international commentariat that the Islamic State may win: That the group will continue to gain territory in Syria and Iraq and will consolidate a permanent government, a state ensconced in the Islamic caliphate its leadership has proclaimed. I ended a recent article on a note of bravado, writing that in spite of its successes on the battlefield and elsewhere, it remains all but certain that Islamic State will ultimately be ground up and destroyed. Today I am less certain, and I have started to imagine what would happen if ISIS actually prevails.
I am reconsidering for a simple reason: U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter's contention that the Iraqi government's military forces show "no will to fight." In a June 1 editorial titled "Who's willing to fight for Iraq?" the New York Times suggested that if Baghdad's military is unwilling or unable to defeat ISIS - if it is outgunned, out-organized, out-strategized and, one must add, terrorized by ISIS savagery - outsiders should stay out. No boots on the ground, no escalation of air strikes; let us limit wasted resources.
What would result from an ISIS victory? First, an official Sunni Muslim state would be consolidated, straddling the post-World War I Sykes-Picot Syria-Iraq border whose very existence exemplifies for the Islamic State how Middle Eastern geopolitics was unilaterally rearranged by European powers. The battlefield would decide exactly how much of Syria and how much of Iraq would fall under the state's control. In Iraq, the Islamic State would incorporate all Arab Sunni areas, beginning with Anbar, the largest Iraqi province. Kurdistan would be left alone, at least for the time being. The Peshmerga army, beefed up by the United States and highly motivated because the Kurdish fighters are defending their own territory...
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearworld.com ...
He might be out of office before he comes up with a policy.
That might be his policy.
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