The mess in the Middle East isn’t getting any better; this despite an awful lot of attention by the White House, the so called loyal opposition and media all over the world. The basic problem is that no one wants to commit anything to a fight that they assume the United States will eventually take on. Obama understands our supposed allies reticence and is playing a game of international chicken, but we aren’t the ones with the most to lose and he must make the Arab States understand that and we must escalate the threat that we will let them sink.
The nations of the world are so used to us fighting their battles that they naturally assume that sooner or later we will step in and send our kids to get killed to solve their problems.
No matter how horrific these beheadings appear to a civilized public, we must see them for what they are; sub-human viciousness wrapped around a scream for attention. They are not a reason for a nation to go to war. They can, however, if we allow our warmongers free reign, be an excuse. These killings do not represent an attack on our nation. These men were captured and killed in Iraq and Syria, not New York and London. These men knew the danger in what they were doing and they went ahead anyway. Sure we want to get even, but that’s on us.
Bill O’Reilly, a guy to whom I seldom give credence, did an excellent breakdown recently on the nations with whom we wish to form an alliance in our attempt to put ISIS out of business. Australia, probably our most reliable ally will commit equipment and probably troops as they always do. Britain will send only goods and services when they have a perfectly good Special Air Service that could commit to the fight, but is wasting away in the bogs. France will surprisingly send planes to bomb but no Foreign Legion and after that it gets pretty thin in Europe. You remember Europe. That’s the place where all the colonial powers live, the ones that screwed up the Middle East in the first place. Of course they’ve all forgotten that now that they aren’t taking plunder from there anymore.
So where will the ground troops come from? Obama is planning on getting them from the Middle East. The Kurds are always the first ones spoken about and their pesh merga are a well-respected fighting force but they are primarily mountain fighters and there aren’t a hell of a lot of mountains down near Baghdad. The second choice is the Iraq army that has already gotten its head handed to it once. This bunch may be able to be whipped into a fighting force but it will take time. The Sunni tribes are the third option but first the Iraq government has to show that they are for real about a unified government.
There has also been a lot of talk about the Free Syrian Army, but on closer investigation they don’t seem a viable option. For one, it appears that they are the ones who sold the journalists to ISIS and for another there is a rumor that they have formed a non-aggression pact with ISIS. John Kerry says that this isn’t true about the ones he wants to arm but in that mess, who knows? So where do these phantom troops really come from?
The Sunni nations of the area, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, all seem to have a reason why they can’t supply troops despite the fact that it was our money that built and equipped their armies. Jordan is the only one that has a legitimate reason to stay out of the fight. They are so buried in refugees from every place that violence is king, that they can barely keep their heads above waster. Turkey, which has a secular government and probably the best army in the area doesn’t seem to want to get involved. They have a couple of reasons. One is financial. They are so busy trading with ISIS that they can’t see their way clear to shooting at them. Then too, ISIS is currently holding 45 Turkish embassy personnel hostages and Turkey, understanding the fanatic nuts it is dealing with, doesn’t want to instigate a massacre. They claim that none of this is true but all evidence points the other way.
There were a bunch of “experts” on the tube the other day talking about how it will take a very long time to train and arm troops to fight this fight. One of them even suggested that it would take a year to train 1,800 troops in Iraq. This guy no longer qualifies as an expert. During WWII when there was a rush, as there is today, it took us six to twelve weeks to train half a million men who had never had a rifle in their hands, load them on boats and attack the beaches in Europe. The guys we intend to train in Iraq grew up with guns in their diapers and they don’t have to learn to march. It’s not in their job description. All they have to know how to do is shoot and duck.
It seems that the only countries that want to actually fight ISIS are Syria and Iran, neither of whom are Sunni and Iran isn’t even Arab, it’s Persian. So the two countries that want to help us are our enemies and the ones who claim to be our allies are standing in a corner with their thumbs up their asses. It may be time to get out.
Speaking of the fact that Iran isn’t an Arab country; I mentioned this situation in one of last week’s blogs but it is very important and bears repeating, especially since none of the corporate media has bothered to mention it. The problem in the Middle East isn’t flowing from the fact that the people are Muslims, it’s flowing from the fact that they are Arabs. There are Muslims all over the world in far greater numbers than in the Middle East. Indonesia has more Muslims than the entire Middle East combined. India has 150 million of them, but all the trouble is being caused in the Middle East where all the Muslims just happen to be Arabs. Why? Because historically the Arab culture of the Middle East has been a feudal struccture, centuries behind the rest of the world where despots abused the people and kept them enslaved. The only way these people could show any kind of revolt was through their religion, which was the only thing not ground into the sand by the rulers. So they talk about Islamic Jihad but what they really mean is Arab Jihad.
Take Saudi Arabia – please. (couldn’t resist) This is a super oil rich country in which the ruling, al-Saud family, otherwise known as the Kingdom, keeps it’s population under control through a series of giveaways that keep them fat and happy and leaches the desire for any kind of revolt from them; this despite the fact that the individual has almost no rights. The homegrown version of Islam that rules in Saudi Arabia is called Salafism, overseen by a medieval sect of conservative clerics called Wahhabis. This antiquated version of Islam, is based on the control of everything, especially women and it is through this strict version of Islam that the Kingdom holds its people in an iron grip. This is the way it has been across the Middle East for centuries but now the people are using that same religious fanaticism, the only power that they were able to maintain; as a weapon. Islam may be the weapon, but it is not Islam’s war. The war is Arab, because the problems are Arab and only in Arab lands.
So the question emerges again ; why are we getting ready for this war when those who have the most to lose in it don’t seem interested in the fight. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran, are the countries that have the most to lose in this war. ISIS could upset the whole balance of power in the Middle East and that could throw all four of these powers into chaos. But what do we really have to gain by getting involved?
Well the answer is that we don’t always do stuff because we have something to gain, at least not all of us. Sometimes we do stuff just because it’s the right thing to do. But we don’t have to be suckers about it. Even with no boots on the ground this will be a dangerous and very costly adventure and we should exert pressure on those who will gain the most from it, to participate in it, even if they don’t want to. It would be easy to say to Turkey, Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia, “If you don’t supply troops we’ll just take our bombs and go home.” But that would just be counter-productive. What we should do is to tell then that we are cutting off all funding to any nation that doesn’t supply the troops needed to fight ISIS. We paid for most of their military systems, we should have a big say in how they are used.
So it comes down to a very clear plan that is, by its nature very complicated. We have to keep bombing. These people cannot be allowed to flourish. And we must find allies that will put troops on the ground. The Kurds and Iraq are already doing this in their country but we have to find someone to go into Syria and do the same job there. John Kerry has stated that there is a group of moderate Syrians that will fight both ISIS and Assad. John McCain says that we can’t ask them to fight ISIS before they fight Assad. Maybe he’s right. If he is it will be the first time in memory. So we can still use another ally in Syria. It should be the Saudis, it could be Egypt and it also could be Iran. But Iran will only fight ISIS because Iran is Assad’s ally.
The question comes down to, do we want to hook up with either Iran or Assad, in order to destroy ISIS, and if we do, what will that mean in our future nuclear negotiations with Iran. It’s an interesting question.