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Yeah, This Will Work Out Just Fine

The Islamic State (ISIS) has set a modern-day “emergent threat” record by going from obscurity to existential global menace in what seems like a matter of weeks. But as with most overnight sensations, there was a longer gestation period outside of the limelight. And like most military threats of the past few decades it was nurtured by, you guessed it, us.

The US of course has a history of arming erstwhile allies only to have them become enemies in later conflicts. So when we started helping the opposition to Syria’s dictatorship (thus producing ISIS), more than a few people saw parallels to past policy mistakes. Here’s a good HuffPo piece comparing America’s 2013 military aid to that rebellion with the arming of the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan that eventually spawned Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Now perhaps the most surreal episode of all has begun, as the US contemplates expanding its current anti-ISIS air strikes to the entire region, with apparent disregard for national borders and in alliance with a new Muslim “coalition of the willing”.

Dempsey: Regional plan key to militants’ defeat in Iraq

U.S. airstrikes on Islamic militants in Iraq have blunted their momentum, but defeating them will require a broad regional approach that draws support from Iraq’s neighbors and includes political and diplomatic efforts, the top U.S. military officer said.

The long-term strategy for defeating the militants includes having the United States and its allies reach out to Iraq’s neighbors, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday.

“This is not just about us,” Dempsey said.

Such a coalition could “squeeze ISIS from multiple directions in order to initially disrupt it and eventually defeat it,” he said.

The militant group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has shown itself to be so brutal that Iraq and the U.S. should be able to find “willing partners” to join efforts to defeat the militants, he said.

But military power won’t be enough, Dempsey said. The strategy must take a comprehensive approach that includes political and diplomatic efforts to address the grievances of millions of Sunnis who have felt disenfranchised by Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government, he said.

The Islamic State had capitalized on the discontent of Sunnis to win support among some segments of the population in Iraq. The United States said it plans to expand support for Iraq’s government as it shows signs of building a more inclusive government. Iraq’s Parliament has nominated a new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, who has pledged to build a new, more inclusive government that will address the concerns of Sunnis and other groups.

“Unless all those things come together military power won’t make a difference,” Dempsey said. “There has to be political, diplomatic, regional, aggressive outreach to those Sunnis to convince them that ISIS is not the path to their future.”

Military power will be part of the strategy and the United States has sent military teams to Iraq to assess the effectiveness of Iraq’s armed forces. The teams have given the Pentagon a window into the effectiveness of units within Iraq’s armed forces, Dempsey said. About four divisions of Iraq’s military collapsed in June when the Islamic State seized Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.

“We’ve got a pretty good idea of which ones we can actually assist and enable should they decide to go on the offensive,” Dempsey said.

Some thoughts
Presumably in return for their help the coalition members will expect serious high-tech weaponry and a lot of cash. And assuming the campaign succeeds and Islamic State is destroyed as a geographic entity — not a guarantee by any means — the region will be left with some ambitious and now even more heavily-armed states. What they’ll do with this new-found power is anybody’s guess, but it probably won’t serve the interests of regional stability.

They might fight among themselves over local issues, maybe pulling the US in on one side or another. They might turn their attention to Israel, which would definitely pull the US in. Or they might funnel their now-surplus arms to independent operators, creating Islamic State 2.0. One thing they almost certainly won’t do is sit back and relax while their military hardware fades into obsolescence.

So the US in particular and the West in general finds itself in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” dilemma. Which is generally what an empire gets when it blunders around intervening in places it doesn’t understand and compounding past mistakes with new bigger ones.

For readers who notice that the above describes US economic policy as well as its foreign adventures, exactly. Both policies derive from the sense of omnipotence that comes from having an unlimited printing press and an unwillingness to admit that the situation is hopeless. In each case the marketplace will impose that judgment, but not, apparently, until we get one more go-round in each arena.

11 thoughts on "Yeah, This Will Work Out Just Fine"

  1. Do you know the story of the “Hydra of Lerna,” for every head cut off, 2 more would grow in its place.

    The greeks were noted for their stories of greek mythology where there was never any final solution. ! solution always begot a new problem,

    Can no one see this with the muslims and the jews? Every intervention by the west begets another more virulent jewish/muslim extremism.

    Israel today seeks perpetual war and so do the arab extremists. The west will never leave Israel’s side which means Israel is the west’s anchor…which will drag all western nations into a 3rd world war as suredly as Serbia dragged all the west into WWI. The arabs are in a death spiral. They would willingly destroy Israel and the western capitals.

    The question is whether ISIS is the muslim response that crosses the rubicon…the point of no return. Is there a point where the west saves itself and withdraws from Israel and the middle east and diffuses arab extremism…because at some point there will be no turning back, no choices, no options…only war…and the next war may see the western nations and Israel descend into a hell that they cannot return from for generations.

    Remember, the US arose to power by avoiding war and foreign entanglements. Those developed or developing nations which can survive the next war intact will own the world for generations as the US did after WWII.

    Treat the middle east, Israel and Isis as the plague…turn away…or like LOT the west may face Armageddon and turn to a pillar of salt expunged of life…because it refused to look away. Turn away from the jews and the warmongers and the money lenders. Turn away before its too late.

  2. Some are suggesting we should team up with Assad and jointly-fight ISIS. Wow. Really? Here’s an idea: We build a fence around the new caliphate and allow people to live within under the 6th century rules which they seem to prefer. No cars, electricity, plumbing or alternative religions or political views. It should be very interesting….

  3. Another example of unintended consequences: the US intervention in Libya led to its arming of mercenaries-for-hire who then took the shiny weapons all the way to Mali and created mayhem over there.

    Thank god for the Oceans! They have done more for US self-defense than the Dept of War.

  4. Nobody pay attention that the new “jihaddists” are young, most of them unemployed, on the margin of the society ,no hope in the horizon and rejected both cultural and even ethnical. In Europe there are millions like this, and in the near
    future, much much more.
    There is the danger.
    History proved that behind arms and armies, the socio-economic factors are the
    crucial ones.

  5. America contains people who actually know a great deal about the Middle East, and those scholars could have found more effective ways of protecting our oil supplies or marginalizing certain radical groups, etc. The real meta-problem is that — symptomatic of our dying, end-phase empire — we have a reverse meritocracy in place at all levels. Whoever is the cockiest guy out there gets the job even though this is negatively correlated with actual ability. Or the most agreeable guy gets the job, the guy who never says anything negative, never says “That won’t work,” but is a “team player” (i.e. ass-kisser to all and sundry). And that guy is always dishonest and ineffective to boot. In short, reverse meritocracy.

    What was prescient about the movie “Office Space” — 15 years old already — is that only when the protagonist stops giving a whit about doing his job does he begin to succeed at work. Precisely. Now take this situation and apply it to D.C., to the Pentagon, to the Federal Reserve, to the NY Times.

    Those in power do practice true sabotage at times, as during false flags, but there’s also a lot that can be explained by stupidity. Not the simple individual variety, which has always been with us, but the pervasive system of incentives for bold overconfidence, dishonesty, and stupidity.

    I haven’t read Ayn Rand but I take it she posited that the brilliant people would one day check out from society. Well, a lot of regular middle class folks who haven’t been able to smother their innate intelligence would love to check out of this system as well. It’s plainly perverse. But I take a degree of comfort in recognizing that this is part of the life cycle of an empire, and it won’t go on forever. Eventually the clusterf*cks catch up to you.

    1. Yes. What you’re describing is embodied in the “Peter Principle” – that people are promoted to the level of their incompetence. They are promoted based upon their abilities and performance at their current level instead of the requirements of the next level.

    2. I checked out. I moved to small town Alaska. I live here with my wife, raising our 2 kids, very close to off-the-grid (we need that interweb though 🙂 ). We have lots of room to breath (land), a free life, not to mention it is BEAUTIFUL. Over 10 years now, no complaints, not even the weather (Kenai Peninsula).

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