Here’s a grim­ly fas­ci­nat­ing take on the chal­lenges fac­ing Oba­ma’s attempt to form a coali­tion of Mid­dle East­ern states against ISIS: the gulf monar­chies that fund­ed and fueled ISIS are still incred­i­bly pissed about Oba­ma only get­ting the Syr­i­an chem­i­cal weapons destroyed with­out wag­ing a full scale war to top­ple the Assad regime and back­ing the Syr­i­an rebel groups like ISIS. It’s as if the gulf monar­chies are most­ly angry about the fact that ISIS does­n’t con­trol ALL of Syr­ia by now which, nat­u­ral­ly, com­pli­cates the cre­ation an anti-ISIS coali­tion:

Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor
Why Oba­ma faces tough task lead­ing region­al coali­tion against Islam­ic State

While some allies in the Mid­dle East appear ready to sup­port US airstrikes in Syr­ia, their agen­das dif­fer from Wash­ing­ton’s. Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry is in Bagh­dad today.
By Scott Peter­son, Staff writer Sep­tem­ber 10, 2014

Istan­bul — As Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma unveils his strat­e­gy to “degrade and destroy” the self-declared Islam­ic State, he will hope to cap­i­tal­ize upon wide­spread dis­gust in the Mid­dle East against the group’s bru­tal ways.

But Mr. Oba­ma also faces a daunt­ing chal­lenge in sell­ing his plans for a region­al coali­tion to lead­ers skep­ti­cal of White House readi­ness to fol­low through on his lat­est promis­es on Syr­ia and Iraq.

The pres­i­dent is report­ed­ly ready to expand into Syr­ia the US mil­i­tary airstrikes that since last month have helped stop the advance of Sun­ni mil­i­tants in Iraq. But ana­lysts say the US track record of luke­warm and muta­ble engage­ment in Syria’s civ­il war has unset­tled allies like Turkey, Jor­dan, Qatar, and Sau­di Ara­bia, which all oppose Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad.

“When you speak to senior deci­sion mak­ers in Riyadh, in Amman, it is shock­ing how deep their mis­trust and dis­il­lu­sion­ment of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion is,” says Prof. Toby Dodge, direc­tor of the Mid­dle East Cen­ter at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.

More­over, these coun­tries have favored, in var­i­ous ways, the same anti-Assad rebels that Wash­ing­ton would like to pre­vail, but also the Islamists that spawned the Islam­ic State (IS) and oth­er jiha­di groups that are now beyond their con­trol. That com­pli­cates any US-led coali­tion against rad­i­cal­ism.

Region­al play­ers note how Oba­ma declared Pres­i­dent Assad “must go” but did lit­tle to make it hap­pen, with on-and-off-again sup­port for “mod­er­ate” anti-Assad rebels.

And they point espe­cial­ly to August last year, when the US pres­i­dent failed to enforce his own explic­it red line after Mr. Assad’s units used chem­i­cal weapons against civil­ians. Instead, a deal was bro­kered to remove and destroy Syria’s chem­i­cal weapons arse­nal, but at the expense – in the per­cep­tions of Mid­dle East cap­i­tals, at least – of US cred­i­bil­i­ty.

That makes Obama’s coali­tion-build­ing chal­lenge as tricky as any orches­trat­ed by his pre­de­ces­sors in the past quar­ter-cen­tu­ry, since Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush spent months lob­by­ing region­al lead­ers – even get­ting Syr­i­an troops into the mix – to oust Sad­dam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait in 1990–1991.

“Col­lec­tive­ly the whole of the Arab Mid­dle East is a region com­ing to terms and react­ing to what they feel to be an absent hege­mon,” says Prof. Dodge. “Now our friends in the White House and Democ­rats every­where will leap for­ward and say, ‘No, no, we’re not absent. We’re just avoid­ing the mis­takes of Bush II, we’ve got a war-weary pop­u­la­tion.’ But in all my years trav­el­ing to the region, I have not seen a series of sup­posed allies of Wash­ing­ton so uneasy.”

Diplo­mat­ic out­reach

While Oba­ma is mak­ing his prime-time address tonight, the diplo­mat­ic out­reach is already under way. US Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry arrived yes­ter­day in Bagh­dad, where a new gov­ern­ment was formed Mon­day night after the depar­ture of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Nouri al-Mali­ki, whose Shi­ite-first poli­cies did much to alien­ate Iraq’s Sun­ni tribes, who as a result part­ly backed the IS advance. IS was for­mer­ly known as ISIS; US offi­cials often refer to ISIL, an alter­na­tive acronym.

Mr. Ker­ry will be in Jor­dan today, and in Riyadh tomor­row will con­vene a region­al secu­ri­ty meet­ing aimed at mar­shal­ing coali­tion part­ners.

While Washington’s Arab allies would like­ly wel­come an expan­sion of the US bomb­ing cam­paign to Syr­ia, their agen­da may be more about regime change in Dam­as­cus than dis­rupt­ing the IS’s reign in the bad­lands of north­east Syr­ia.

“If there is a sense that the fight against ISIS in Syr­ia is being seen in iso­la­tion from the big­ger need, or the equal need, to have change in Syr­ia from Assad, then I think we will start to see this coali­tion real­ly start to fray,” says Salman Shaikh, direc­tor of the Brook­ings Doha Cen­ter in Qatar.

While that may be a sec­ondary goal for the White House, many in any anti-IS coali­tion will want to see the US apply the same resolve to Syria’s regime that it has applied to Iraq and its fight against IS.

“There is real­ly a lot of resid­ual anger towards the Unit­ed States and its moti­va­tions in Syr­ia over the last three years – first and fore­most among Syr­i­ans on the ground,” says Mr. Shaikh. “There is a dan­ger that if peo­ple are asked to choose, espe­cial­ly on the ground in Syr­ia, they might decide, ‘Well, we’re not going to fight [IS] and leave Assad alone, we’d rather walk away.’”
Risk of back­lash

As suc­ces­sive US pres­i­dents have dis­cov­ered, mil­i­tary inter­ven­tions in Arab lands, even on the back of region­al coali­tions, are fraught with polit­i­cal risks and can quick­ly gen­er­ate vio­lent reac­tions.

That’s why cer­tain play­ers like Qatar and Sau­di Ara­bia are like­ly to hedge their bets to see how the US man­ages the coali­tion and its own objec­tives. A divi­sion of labor could emerge such that Arab mem­bers pro­vide logis­ti­cal and oth­er sup­port, but stop far short of the active mil­i­tary roles some like Qatar played in Libya to bring down Qaddafi in 2011.

...

Notice the sen­ti­ment “If there is a sense that the fight against ISIS in Syr­ia is being seen in iso­la­tion from the big­ger need, or the equal need, to have change in Syr­ia from Assad, then I think we will start to see this coali­tion real­ly start to fray.” In oth­er words, it’s look­ing like the gulf monar­chies are going to demand that the destruc­tion of ISIS must include the top­pling of Assad if their par­tic­i­pat­ing can be guar­an­teed. And this is pos­si­bly a mul­ti-year long reen­gage­ment. And that which then rais­es the oth­er obvi­ous ques­tion: if a coali­tion of Sun­ni armies from around the region is being assem­bled as a key on-the-ground back­up force for the Iraqi army once ISIS gets rout­ed from a region, who’s going to be the occu­pi­er for the non-Sun­ni parts of Syr­ia once Assad is top­pled? Is it assumed that the Free Syr­i­an Army will be “mod­er­ate” enough to occu­py the Sun­ni regions after it defeats ISIS and Assad but not go a revenge spree against the Alaw­ites and oth­er minori­ties? Is Iraq’s army going to be the pres­ence in the non-Sun­ni parts of Syr­ia? Would Turkey be will­ing to pro­tect the Syr­i­an non-Sun­nis? Iran? There’s a big pow­er vac­u­um that the gulf monar­chies are demand­ing, but in all the years of call­ing for the top­pling of Assad there’s been almost no pub­lic dis­cus­sion of what comes next if those demands are met. And yet post-Assad plans sure­ly exist giv­en the sus­tained and extreme desire on the part of the gulf monar­chies and neo­cons to top­ple Assad. It’s a reminder that the full fledged war to destroy ISIS the US pub­lic and neo­cons are now demand­ing is like­ly to involve not one but two wars and two occu­pa­tions. It’s not offi­cial­ly two wars but unof­fi­cial­ly it does­n’t look like the part­ners Oba­ma needs are going to accept any­thing less. While some will no doubt find an expand­ed war in Syr­ia to be the best idea ever, hope­ful­ly the US pub­lic that is cur­rent­ly demand­ing the destruc­tion of ISIS with­out boots on the ground will be a lit­tle under­stand­ing if the new ‘no boots mis­sion impos­si­ble’ it’s demand­ing ends up requir­ing more boots on the ground just to avoid an even worse cri­sis than already exists. It’s not like it will be an unfa­mil­iar sit­u­a­tion at that point.

Here’s a reminder that the “arm the mod­er­ate rebels” plan for deal­ing with ISIS is poten­tial­ly going to require a “deal with the col­lapse of Syr­ia”-phase before the “deal­ing with ISIS”-phase even begins. And the “deal with the col­lapse of Syria”-phase could be espe­cial­ly calami­tous now that key mod­er­ate rebels have report­ed­ly signed a truce with ISIS until the fall of the Assad regime which means there’s also going to be an “ISIS and oth­er rad­i­cal Islamists occu­py­ing non-Sun­ni communities”-phase:

The Huff­in­g­ton Post
ISIS Strikes Deal With Mod­er­ate Syr­i­an Rebels: Reports
Post­ed: 09/12/2014 9:49 pm EDT Updat­ed: 09/13/2014 12:59 pm EDT

Akbar Shahid Ahmed

Ryan Grim

As the Unit­ed States begins to deep­en ties with mod­er­ate Syr­i­an rebels to com­bat the extrem­ist group ISIS, also known as the Islam­ic State, a key com­po­nent of its coali­tion appears to have struck a non-aggres­sion pact with the group.

Accord­ing to Agence France-Presse, ISIS and a num­ber of mod­er­ate and hard-line rebel groups have agreed not to fight each oth­er so that they can focus on tak­ing down the regime of Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad. Oth­er sources say the sig­na­to­ries include a major U.S. ally linked to the Free Syr­i­an Army. More­over, the leader of the Free Syr­i­an Army said Sat­ur­day that the group would not take part in U.S. plans for destroy­ing the Islam­ic State until it got assur­ances on top­pling Assad.

The deal between ISIS and the mod­er­ate Syr­i­an groups casts doubt over Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s fresh­ly announced strat­e­gy to arm and train the groups against ISIS.

The AFP report cit­ed infor­ma­tion from the Syr­i­an Obser­va­to­ry for Human Rights, a U.K.-based group mon­i­tor­ing the Syr­i­an civ­il war, which said par­ties to the agree­ment “promise not to attack each oth­er because they con­sid­er the prin­ci­pal ene­my to be the Nus­sayri regime.” The term Nus­sayri refers to the Alaw­ite eth­nic group that Assad and many of his sup­port­ers belong to. AFP said the agree­ment was signed in a sub­urb of the Syr­i­an cap­i­tal, where ISIS has a strong pres­ence.

Charles Lis­ter, a fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion’s Doha Cen­ter, cit­ed a report from the anti-regime Ori­ent Net web­site to sug­gest on Twit­ter that the sig­na­to­ries of the cease­fire include a U.S.-backed coali­tion called the Syr­i­an Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Front. Accord­ing to the U.K.-based out­let Mid­dle East Eye, that same Ori­ent Net report says the cease­fire between groups described in the U.S. as “mod­er­ate rebels” and the Islam­ic State was medi­at­ed by the al-Nus­ra Front, al Qaeda’s affil­i­ate in Syr­ia.

As recent­ly as March, the Syr­i­an Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Front and its leader were described in For­eign Pol­i­cy as “the West­’s best fight­ing chance against Syr­i­a’s Islamist armies.” As of that report, the group con­trolled 25,000 fight­ers and its leader had close ties with the West­ern-friend­ly Syr­i­an Nation­al Coali­tion.

Its leader ini­tial­ly won West­ern favor by suc­cess­ful­ly fight­ing ISIS in north­ern Syr­ia.

“He proved his met­tle in a sense and that’s what endeared him to the Amer­i­cans,” said Joshua Lan­dis, a promi­nent Syr­ia expert at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa. “The Amer­i­cans are look­ing for peo­ple who can actu­al­ly fight. That’s been their prob­lem: they’ve gone with peo­ple who are mod­er­ate but they don’t know to fight. This guy appears to be both mod­er­ate and he knows how to fight.”

The Ori­ent Net report on the cease­fire iden­ti­fied the Syr­i­an Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Front as part of the Free Syr­i­an Army, the loose array of non-jihadist rebel brigades that the U.S. has direct­ly sup­port­ed since last year. Oba­ma asked Con­gress to approve $500 mil­lion to train and equip “vet­ted” Syr­i­an rebels this sum­mer. He repeat­ed his request in his address Wednes­day about ISIS.

Despite its rep­u­ta­tion as a palat­able ally, the U.S.-backed Syr­i­an Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Front has pre­vi­ous­ly said that its chief goal is not to stop the rise of extrem­ists, but to top­ple Assad. In April, its leader told The Inde­pen­dent, “It’s clear that I’m not fight­ing against al-Qa’ida. This is a prob­lem out­side of Syria’s bor­der, so it’s not our prob­lem. I don’t have a prob­lem with any­one who fights against the regime inside Syr­ia.”

The prospect of a group once sup­port­ed by the U.S. now sit­ting down with ISIS rais­es fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about U.S. strat­e­gy in Syr­ia. Why sup­port Syr­i­ans who have a very dif­fer­ent, clear­ly stat­ed goal and who will act as they see fit to achieve it? What assur­ance does the admin­is­tra­tion have that fight­ers it trains and arms in Syr­ia won’t ally with ISIS if it seems like the most effec­tive anti-Assad force?

The White House argues that its abil­i­ty to spot­light and sup­port reli­able rebel groups has been height­ened by improved and expand­ed intel­li­gence. In an inter­view with The Huff­in­g­ton Post before news of the pact broke, deputy nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Ben Rhodes expressed con­fi­dence in U.S. allies in the region.

“We have been work­ing with the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion now for a cou­ple of years, pro­vid­ing them assis­tance, non-lethal at first but then we [now] pro­vide them with some mil­i­tary assis­tance, so we know them bet­ter today than we did a year, two years ago,” Rhodes said. “There are peo­ple who have been vet­ted who we have rela­tion­ships with, who we deliv­er assis­tance to, so we’re not start­ing from scratch.”

Many of those groups, the admin­is­tra­tion acknowl­edges, have not passed a vet­ting process, which explains the delay in expand­ing assis­tance. But the news that the Syr­i­an Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Front, a major play­er in the mod­er­ate coali­tion, has now cho­sen to stop fight­ing ISIS may inspire oth­er groups, either already vet­ted or still wait­ing for aid, to deter­mine that a deal with the extrem­ist group is worth­while. Giv­en reports that Assad avoid­ed fight­ing ISIS in order to crush the mod­er­ate rebels — his cal­cu­lus being that the West would even­tu­al­ly com­bat the extrem­ists, as it is now doing — poten­tial U.S. part­ners may decide that instead of being prey to both extrem­ists and the gov­ern­ment, they should set­tle one bat­tle.

“These guys are all starved for arms,” Lan­dis said. “They don’t want to go get them­selves killed by fight­ing ISIS until they fig­ure out where Oba­ma is.”

That turns a con­flict that the White House hopes is three-sided — with rad­i­cal Sun­nis, mod­er­ate Sun­nis and Assad all bat­tling each oth­er — into a sec­tar­i­an, two-sided war of Sun­nis against Assad. Reports already sug­gest that Syr­i­ans who entered the civ­il war oppos­ing Assad are now turn­ing to ISIS as their best bet for a dif­fer­ent kind of gov­ern­ment.

Rhodes warned that a wrong move by the U.S. may lead to that pre­cise per­cep­tion and real­i­ty.

“If we were to try to run a play with Assad, we would ensure that they” — all Sun­ni rebel groups — “were turned against us, and in fact we would be tak­ing sides in a sec­tar­i­an war against one side. We need a Sun­ni part­ner in these coun­tries,” he said. “That’s why we need this inclu­sive gov­ern­ment [in Iraq] and that’s why we need a Sun­ni oppo­si­tion part­ner in Syr­ia.”

This news sug­gests that part­ners will be hard to find. Lis­ter said the pact is a prod­uct of failed U.S.-led West­ern pol­i­cy in Syr­ia.

...

The sen­ti­ment expressed by Charles Lis­ter at that end that this sit­u­a­tion “is a prod­uct of failed U.S.-led West­ern pol­i­cy in Syr­ia,” is some­thing you often hear these days but real­ly needs to be fleshed out because it seems to assume that there was a “suc­cess­ful” means of vio­lent­ly col­laps­ing the Syr­i­an state and replac­ing it with a Sun­ni-dom­i­nat­ed gov­ern­ment with absolute­ly no assur­ances that the Alaw­ites and oth­er minori­ties would­n’t find them­selves locked out of pow­er and in the same sit­u­a­tion that the Sun­nis in Iraq cur­rent­ly find them­selves. There also seems to be an assump­tion that the al Qae­da affil­i­ates like Al Nus­ra and ISIS would­n’t have been the prime ben­e­fi­cia­ries of a joint US/gulf states/Turkish war on Syr­ia that peo­ple were clam­or­ing for in 2012. Would the gulf states that have been financ­ing the Islamist rebels even been will­ing to accept a sec­u­lar Sun­ni state or would they have con­tin­ued back­ing the Islamists in the hopes that a civ­il war between the mod­er­ates and Islamists could turn Syr­ia into anoth­er far right theoc­ra­cy? The lat­ter seems a lot more like­ly so should­n’t there be aggres­sive talks about how to form a sec­u­lar Sunni/Shia/Christian/whatever post-Assad gov­ern­ment that does­n’t result in Islamist rule and does­n’t ter­ror­ize the non-Sun­nis going on right now? Will the gulf monar­chies be will­ing to accept a non-Islamist out­come for Syr­ia? That’s very unclear.

The oth­er (behead­ing) videos may betray an under­ground reich sig­na­ture also. Until the US invad­ed Iraq, the sen­tence of behead­ing was gen­er­al­ly car­ried out in a man­ner rough­ly anal­o­gous to the euro­pean 16th cen­tu­ry: a burly fel­low with a big blade swung it at the kneel­ing con­demned’s neck. The new cus­tom of throat-cut­ting the­ater that has arisen since the inva­sion has, as its most recent notable pre­de­ces­sor, the noto­ri­ous con­tests held by the Ustashe in WW2. Per­haps it is actu­al­ly some­thing learned dur­ing the Yugoslav war by Arab fas­cist mer­ce­nar­ies.

The bro­ken record of the dam­aged soul makes for one hel­lu­va polit­i­cal din:

Right Wing Watch
Lar­ry Klay­man: Mil­i­tary Should Oust Oba­ma Like In Egypt
Sub­mit­ted by Bri­an Tash­man on Mon­day, 9/22/2014 2:40 pm

Lar­ry Klay­man is once again call­ing for the mil­i­tary to remove Pres­i­dent Oba­ma from office, telling Tim Wild­mon of the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion in an inter­view today that mil­i­tary lead­ers should “rise up” and “go to the pres­i­dent and say, ‘Your time’s up,’ just like they did to Mohamed Mor­si in Egypt, ‘Take a hike guy, you’re destroy­ing the coun­try.’”

Klay­man, who orga­nized a White House ral­ly last year that he hoped would lead to Obama’s ouster, insist­ed that the move would not be a coup d’état because Oba­ma is “not a legit­i­mate pres­i­dent” and is “hav­ing our peo­ple killed for no rea­son.”

Klay­man added that Oba­ma is an obser­vant Mus­lim who wears a “ring that says my only God is Allah,” while Wild­mon said he believes the pres­i­dent “is a Mus­lim in his think­ing.”

His claim that Oba­ma wears an Islam­ic ring is com­plete­ly false and orig­i­nat­ed with a debunked World­Net­Dai­ly arti­cle.

At anoth­er point in the “Today’s Issues” inter­view, Klay­man said Oba­ma “pro­tects his Mus­lim broth­ers at the expense of Chris­tians and Jews.”

“This pres­i­dent is anti-Chris­t­ian, he’s anti-Semit­ic, he doesn’t like white peo­ple,” Klay­man con­tin­ued. “We’re tak­ing strong legal action hope­ful­ly to get him removed from office as soon as pos­si­ble before we go under for the count.”

The right-wing activist went on to say that Oba­ma is a “social­ist, a black Mus­lim in the mold of Louis Far­rakhan” who wants peo­ple to “pay back African Amer­i­cans” by “decon­struct­ing the coun­try, try­ing to bring the coun­try down, in effect like revenge.”

...

And in case you’re curi­ous about what Lar­ry rec­om­mends for ISIS: nuke all ISIS-con­trolled cities:

Right Wing Watch
Lar­ry Klay­man: Oba­ma Must Fol­low God’s Will And Nuke ISIS
Sub­mit­ted by Bri­an Tash­man on Mon­day, 9/22/2014 10:50 am

Lar­ry Klay­man believes Pres­i­dent Oba­ma secret­ly wants ISIS to expand through­out the Mideast, and sug­gests today that if Oba­ma was seri­ous about defeat­ing ISIS or fol­low­ing “the divine grace and guid­ance of the Father and his Son,” then he would sim­ply nuke cities con­trolled by ISIS and win the “reli­gious war.”

Klay­man writes in a World­Net­Dai­ly col­umn titled, “Best ISIS Strat­e­gy: Nuke ’Em,” that the pres­i­dent refus­es to take “strong action” against his “Mus­lim broth­ers” and is sab­o­tag­ing U.S. troops by order­ing “our brave ser­vice­men not to fire on Mus­lims unless they were essen­tial­ly fired upon first.”

He con­cludes that since Oba­ma doesn’t have the “stom­ach for killing his creed en masse” and is root­ing for groups like ISIS in hopes of “destroy­ing our Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage and way of life,” Amer­i­cans should “use all legal and con­sti­tu­tion­al means to remove this pro­found­ly unwor­thy and dan­ger­ous man from office before all is lost.”

With near una­nim­i­ty among experts in war­fare, Pres­i­dent Barack Hus­sein Obama’s “strat­e­gy” to defeat ISIS is a sham that is designed to lose. While the “Mus­lim in Chief’s” moti­va­tion to fail can be attrib­uted in part to his Islam­ic her­itage, Obama’s pro­fessed method of com­bat is strange­ly rem­i­nis­cent of Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s ini­tial strat­e­gy after Sept. 11, 2001.

…

The harsh real­i­ty is that Mus­lims can­not be count­ed on to force­ful­ly fight oth­er Mus­lims, and thus Obama’s sim­i­lar plan to have a coali­tion of pri­mar­i­ly Arabs do the dirty work in killing ISIS is doomed for fail­ure. But of course, that is what our so-called pres­i­dent wants. How dare we Chris­tians and Jews think of and advo­cate wip­ing out his fel­low Mus­lims bent on destroy­ing our way of life? Oba­ma sim­ply has no stom­ach for killing his creed en masse, under any cir­cum­stances, even when the cir­cum­stances present an exis­ten­tial threat to the Unit­ed States, the fraud­u­lent Mus­lim usurper’s “adopt­ed” home.

Let us final­ly face it and stop pussy­foot­ing around. We are in a reli­gious war! In the end, it is either them or us. If we intend to have any chance of sur­vival, it is also time that we face real­i­ty. Either we kill these rad­i­cal Mus­lim ISIS cock­roach­es – all of them – before they spread like can­cer and infest the globe, or in time they will kill all of us. It is sur­vival time, boys and girls. No time for the weak at heart. God under­stood this when he sent a plague to kill the Egyp­tians, allow­ing Moses to flee with his enslaved peo­ple for the Promised Land. God act­ed sim­i­lar­ly when he destroyed the Roman Empire and the Jew­ish high priests after they con­spired to cru­ci­fy his Son. How can we humans, with the divine grace and guid­ance of the Father and his Son, act dif­fer­ent­ly under these dire cir­cum­stances?

…

Notwith­stand­ing the Mus­lim president’s trai­tor­ous acts fur­ther­ing the planned Islam­ic caliphate over the last six years, Bush and com­pa­ny sowed the seeds that Oba­ma then exploit­ed to fur­ther the insid­i­ous plans of his Mid­dle East­ern Mus­lim broth­ers to again enslave Jews and now Chris­tians to a world where Shari­ah law rules the school under the dev­il­ish hand of their god, Allah.

So the time has come to return to the strat­e­gy of Pres­i­dent Tru­man and face real­i­ty. If we real­ly want to destroy ISIS and set an exam­ple for oth­er rad­i­cal Mus­lims and the Putins of the world to fear us and leave us in peace, we must use the tools that can do this. Put sim­ply, we should employ tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons to wipe out the ene­my. We can­not wor­ry that Islam­ic civil­ians will be killed in the process. In the end this strat­e­gy, as was true of the Japan­ese in World War II, saves not just Amer­i­can but Mus­lim lives as well.

...

Yes, these are the times that try men’s souls. No more “sun­shine patri­ots”! The time to fight back with over­whelm­ing force is now before it is too late. Let the Islam­ic ter­ror­ists be destroyed total­ly with our strongest weapons – giv­ing them an ear­ly bur­ial in hell replete with 72 vir­gins for each one.

As for the pres­i­dent, let us now also have the guts and wis­dom to use all legal and con­sti­tu­tion­al means to remove this pro­found­ly unwor­thy and dan­ger­ous man from office before all is lost.

That’s going to require a lot of nukes. Still, Lar­ry does have a tal­ent for gen­er­at­ing catchy far right memes. Could a push for nuk­ing cities across Iraq and Syr­ia become the next phase in the Great Amer­i­can ISIS Freak Out?

With 62% of Repub­li­can vot­ers back­ing some form of ground troops (even the folks at HotAir had a “wow” reac­tion to that one), the push for an expand­ed US ground pres­ence in Iraq and Syr­ia is only going to increase as the US midterms get clos­er. And that prob­a­bly means more alter­na­tive ideas for how to get those troops on the ground are on the way too. Ideas like using an army of dis­pos­able sol­diers:

The Dai­ly Ban­ter
Bill O’Reilly’s Out­landish Pro­pos­al For a Mer­ce­nary Army of 25,000 Pri­va­teers to Fight ISIS

Bob Cesca on Sep­tem­ber 24, 2014

Bill O’Reilly fig­ured out the solu­tion to the Mid­dle East’s ISIS prob­lem, and it doesn’t involve Amer­i­can troops on the ground or in the skies above Iraq and Syr­ia. O’Reilly’s solu­tion might as well be the A‑Team — bay­o­net-charg­ing into Raqqa aboard a herd of screech­ing veloci­rap­tors, it’s just that ridicu­lous. Briefly put, Bill O’Reilly wants to hire and train 25,000 elite mer­ce­nar­ies to scare the piss out of ISIS, and he’s not only absolute­ly pos­i­tive this will work, but he’s cer­tain that this is exact­ly what will hap­pen.

“It’s going to hap­pen. This anti-ter­ror army is going to hap­pen,” he said Tues­day morn­ing on CBS, just 12 hours or so after pitch­ing the far-fetched con­cept dur­ing the open­ing seg­ment of his Mon­day night edi­tion of The O’Reilly Fac­tor. Here’s his scheme:

We need ground forces. How­ev­er, the Amer­i­can peo­ple, per­haps right­ly so, don’t want to send any more of our troops into these chaot­ic coun­tries. What about a mer­ce­nary army, elite fight­ers well paid, well trained to defeat ter­ror­ists all over the world? Here’s how it will work. Fight­ers recruit­ed by Amer­i­ca and trained in the U.S.A. by our Spe­cial Forces. U.S. Army rules of engage­ment would be fol­lowed, strict dis­ci­pline formed by the Gene­va Con­ven­tion. Amer­i­ca would be select­ing who makes the cut and how they are deployed with an eye on a 25,000 per­son force. Amer­i­can and NATO offi­cers would lead the mer­ce­nary army and the U.S.A. would also pro­vide logis­ti­cal sup­port, each sol­dier would sign a con­tract, three year com­mit­ment and again they would be high­ly paid.

Not only is this pro­pos­al absurd to any­one with a func­tion­ing intel­lect, but as my lib­er­al (small “l”) inter­ven­tion­ist friend Pro­fes­sor Tom Nichols, Ph.D. from the Naval War Col­lege told O’Reilly to his face dur­ing the seg­ment, it’s high­ly immoral, “Well, Bill, I under­stand your frus­tra­tion. I real­ly do. But this is a ter­ri­ble idea, a ter­ri­ble idea not just as a prac­ti­cal mat­ter but a moral mat­ter. It’s a moral­ly cor­ro­sive idea to try to out­source our nation­al secu­ri­ty. This is some­thing Amer­i­cans are going to have to deal for them­selves. We’re not going to solve this prob­lem by cre­at­ing an army of Mar­vel Avengers or the Guardians of the Galaxy.”

Exact­ly right.

We already have an elite force of well-trained, Eng­lish-speak­ing sol­diers known as the U.S. mil­i­tary. O’Reilly’s would-be mer­ce­nar­ies would be attached to just as many loved-ones as our sol­diers are, and if the mer­ce­nar­ies are killed under an Amer­i­can flag, their deaths will be just as mourned and just as trag­ic. O’Reilly said, “I have seen too many guys come back with arms and legs blown off from cor­rupt peo­ple in Afghanistan and Iraq,” to which Tom replied, “We don’t solve that prob­lem by hir­ing an army of mer­ce­nar­ies claim­ing we real­ly don’t own them.”

Sure, pre­sum­ably many of these mer­ce­nar­ies will have homes and kids and mort­gages, that is unless O’Reilly’s pri­av­teers would be made up of Ter­mi­na­tor style T‑1000 liq­uid met­al dread­nauts car­ry­ing phased plas­ma rifles with a 20-watt range.

While I don’t sup­port send­ing more ground troops into the fra­cas, I don’t see why we couldn’t make sure our exist­ing sol­diers are “well paid” and equipped with what­ev­er gear and arms this mer­ce­nary army would pos­sess. Instead of doing that — the log­i­cal solu­tion — it sounds like O’Reilly is propos­ing that we should just replace the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary, which is oper­at­ed under the umbrel­la of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, with a corp of pri­vate, out-sourced sol­diers-for-hire like­ly at triple or quadru­ple the cost. Again, we have a stand­ing army with an estab­lished and well-test­ed chain of com­mand. Why does Bill O’Reilly think they couldn’t, if deployed, do the job?

He clear­ly thinks his mer­ce­nary army can achieve some­thing that our actu­al non-sci­ence-fic­tion sol­diers are inca­pable of, empha­siz­ing that, “This force…would strike fear into every ter­ror­ist in the world because they nev­er know when the knock on the door is com­ing.” Um, why? And how would O’Reilly’s fly­ing mon­keys achieve this above and beyond the abil­i­ty of the most pow­er­ful mil­i­tary in the his­to­ry of civ­i­liza­tion? Would they wear scary masks? Would they blare Gwar music? He didn’t say. He just made a fist into the cam­era. Well, in that case.

...

Dur­ing the Iraq War, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion exper­i­ment­ed with using pri­vate con­trac­tors as sol­diers, and as we’ve read in the hor­ror-sto­ries wrought by Black­wa­ter (now “Xe”) and oth­ers, it was a failed exper­i­ment. And now O’Reilly wants to try the same thing but on a larg­er scale. Elim­i­nat­ing a gov­ern­ment-oper­at­ed mil­i­tary in lieu of a pri­vate, for-prof­it band of mer­ce­nar­ies adds an entire­ly new lay­er of awful­ness and the very real poten­tial for long-term tragedies the likes of which we can scarce­ly pre­dict.

Well, there’s prob­a­bly going to be at least one big fan of this pro­pos­al. And giv­en the Amer­i­can pub­lic’s gen­er­al lack of a desire to pay the full costs of war, there’s cer­tain­ly going to be some appeal to send­ing sol­diers into the bat­tle field on a one-way tick­et. As Bill point­ed out:

O’Reilly said, “I have seen too many guys come back with arms and legs blown off from cor­rupt peo­ple in Afghanistan and Iraq,” to which Tom replied, “We don’t solve that prob­lem by hir­ing an army of mer­ce­nar­ies claim­ing we real­ly don’t own them.”

So appar­ent­ly we’re just going to leave the mer­ce­nar­ies there after they get their limbs blown off. Will this plan catch on? Maybe?

“The War Nerd” Gary Brech­er has a new piece on rise of ISIS that impor­tant make an impor­tant point: is every­one over­es­ti­mat­ing ISIS as a mil­i­tary force? Not their awful­ness or their incred­i­ble suc­cess at wage psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare through behead­ings and oth­er ter­ror­iz­ing acts designed to cre­ate an aura of bru­tal invi­ci­bil­i­ty. That psy-op capa­bil­i­ty does­n’t appear to have been over­es­ti­mat­ed. But are ISIS’s on-the-ground mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties real­ly as fear­some as is assumed? As Brech­er points out, that’s not backed up by the evi­dence since most of ISIS’s major gains in ter­ri­to­ry hap­pened with­out a fight:

Pan­do Dai­ly
The War Nerd: Let’s put Islam­ic State’s men­ac­ing advance into per­spec­tive by… look­ing at a map

By Gary Brech­er
On Sep­tem­ber 28, 2014

For a week now, we’ve been get­ting non­stop scare sto­ries about Islam­ic State’s men­ac­ing advance on the Syr­i­an Kur­dish town of Kobani. And as far as it goes, the sto­ries are true: Islam­ic State (IS) did come with­in 14 km of Kobani, attack­ing from the South, West, and East, before US air strikes and rein­force­ments from the Turk­ish-Kur­dish PKK mili­tia stopped them.

And yes, the fall of Kobani would be a bad thing. A very bad thing, because IS is some­thing unusu­al: A demo­nized group that real­ly is as demon­ic as the main­stream media makes it out to be. Not as pow­er­ful, not as impor­tant, but every bit as demon­ic. Islam­ic State—latest in a long string of names for what was once “Al Qae­da Iraq”—is a col­lec­tion of the worst sur­vivors of var­i­ous Sun­ni Iraqi mili­tias, spiced with a few over-hyped Euro­pean misog­y­nist con­verts. A rot­ten group, whose idea of god­ly fun is killing hero­ic, uppi­ty women like Sami­ra Al-Nuai­mi and rap­ing cap­tured Yazi­di chil­dren, and I hope they all suf­fer mis­er­able deaths, the soon­er the bet­ter.

But IS is not per­form­ing the great mil­i­tary feats these scare sto­ries give them cred­it for. And mak­ing them out to be such great con­querors only inflates the ridicu­lous van­i­ty of the sadis­tic ham-actors who flock to IS.

Take this alleged push toward Kobani. To see how lit­tle it real­ly means, you need cer­tain skills, like… oh, I dun­no, being able to read a map. So start by find­ing Kobani on a map—which isn’t always easy, because Kobani is the Kur­dish name, and many sites, includ­ing Google Maps, list it by the com­pet­ing Arab one, “Ayn al-Arab,” though a search for “Kobani” will direct you to the right place, under the name “Ayn al-Arab.” OK, now, you’ve found Kobani/Ayn al-Arab, right? Yeah, lit­tle town on the Syr­ia-Turkey border—which, by the way, is the key to every­thing that’s going on there. Now, let your fin­ger drift west­ward along that bor­der about 25 km. You’ll come to anoth­er lit­tle bor­der town called Jarab­u­lus.

...

So what? Well, the point is that Jarab­u­lus, a dusty lit­tle nowhere town of about 12,000 peo­ple, hap­pens to be the loca­tion of one of the first “Emi­rates” declared by Islam­ic State in Syr­ia.

Assad’s Syr­i­an Arab Army (SAA) nev­er made a seri­ous attempt to hold the bor­der cross­ing at Jarab­u­lus, so it came under Sun­ni rebel con­trol as ear­ly as the sum­mer of 2012. At that time, the resis­tance was an ad hoc group orga­nized on clan lines, like many spon­ta­neous Sun­ni neigh­bor­hood insur­gent groups in the ear­ly stages of the war. This one, accord­ing to the excel­lent Syr­ia ana­lyst Aymenn Jawad Al-Tami­mi, was called “The Fam­i­ly of Jadir,” after its leader, Yusuf Al-Jadir. This group con­trolled the lit­tle town of Jarabulus—without call­ing it an “emirate”—until IS (which was still call­ing itself “I.S.I.S.,” or “The Islam­ic State of Al-Shams [Syr­ia]”) took Jarab­u­lus by force, in June of 2013.

Keep this time­line in mind when you’re try­ing to assess the sig­nif­i­cance of IS’s big push toward Kobani: IS(IS) took Jarab­u­lus, only 25 km west of Kobani, more than 15 months ago. If it real­ly were any­thing like the pow­er­ful, mobile force it’s being made out to be, it could and should have swarmed east to take the next sig­nif­i­cant bor­der town, Kobani/Ayn al-Arab, imme­di­ate­ly after­ward.

But that didn’t hap­pen. Instead, IS did what it always did: Pub­lic­i­ty. It declared this nowhere lit­tle town of Jarab­u­lus an “emi­rate.” You could have heard the Syr­i­ans laugh­ing even over the cel­e­bra­to­ry AK fire. “Emi­rate”? Jarab­u­lus? Those two words just don’t go togeth­er in Syr­i­an Ara­bic. It would be like Bak­ers­field declar­ing itself an “Empire.” No, even that doesn’t catch the absur­di­ty of “Emi­rate of Jarab­u­lus,” because Bak­ers­field is a fair­ly big town. More like “The Empire of Tur­lock.” (Sor­ry, Tur­lock, but I got a tick­et once going through your lousy one-street burg and now you pay the price.)

The next thing IS(IS) did when they took Jarab­u­lus was to cut off water sup­plies to Kobani, hop­ing to use thirst to dri­ve the Kurds out, a tac­tic they tried sev­er­al times over the next few months.

What they didn’t do was mount a seri­ous frontal attack on Kobani, even though the town was defend­ed only by light­ly-armed YPG mili­tia. It wasn’t until June, 2014—when IS had a big suc­cess on its East­ern (Iraqi) front, pan­ick­ing the weak Shia-Arab “Iraqi Army” into aban­don­ing all of Anbar Province with­out a fight—that IS was able to trans­fer some of its cap­tured heavy weapons to the attack on Kobani, over­run­ning Kur­dish town mili­tias who were try­ing to stop tanks and artillery with noth­ing more than AKs and a few RPGs. With all this armor—paid for by you Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers, so thank Mis­ter Cheney the next time you see him—IS was able to take sev­er­al dozen Kur­dish vil­lages in the enclave around Kobani.

But stand back a sec­ond and squint at this sup­pos­ed­ly sig­nif­i­cant advance. First of all, it came a whole year after IS declared its “Emi­rate” in Jarab­u­lus, just 25 km west of Kobani. So the front lines bare­ly moved in that year, even though the Kur­dish forces were no more than neigh­bor­hood mili­tias with noth­ing more than small arms. Sec­ond, it only hap­pened when IS, using its one good move—shifting forces across the Iraq/Syria bor­der, away from pres­sure and toward opportunity—gained a huge, though tem­po­rary, advan­tage in weapon­ry by bring­ing Iraqi armor against those vil­lage mili­tias. And third—and most impor­tant: It failed. Even with that huge advan­tage in weapon­ry, IS has failed to take Kobani, after a year and a half of woof­ing, a mas­sive bulk-up with cap­tured Iraqi armor, and the covert help of the Turk­ish author­i­ties, who have been doing every­thing to make life eas­i­er for Islam­ic State forces and hard­er for the Kurds oppos­ing them.

Even with all that over­bal­ance of forces against them, the Kurds of Kobani have kept this sup­pos­ed­ly unstop­pable IS jug­ger­naut at least 14 km from Kobani. That’s weak­ness, almost laugh­able weak­ness. And it puts a new light on Islam­ic State’s one sig­nif­i­cant vic­to­ry, its rout of the so-called Iraqi Army from all of Anbar Province last June. That Army was huge and expen­sive­ly fit­ted out with all the lat­est Amer­i­can giz­mos, but it was also demor­al­ized, cor­rupt, and stuffed with con­scripts from the Shia of the South, who had been a sub­ject peo­ple, ter­ror­ized by, and ter­ri­fied of, their Sun­ni mas­ters. It’s not that Iraqi Shia won’t fight; they will, and very fiercely—but only for their besieged neigh­bor­hoods, their hered­i­tary imams, or—above all—any pub­lic insult to their reli­gion. You find that pat­tern among sub­ject peo­ples all over the world: They’ll die for the ’hood or the tem­ple, but they can’t cold-blood­ed­ly form up, march into the ter­ri­to­ry of their for­mer slave-mas­ters, and occu­py that ter­ri­to­ry with­out quak­ing at the thought the old mas­ters will reassert them­selves.

When Islam­ic State roared over the bor­der, pre­ced­ed by its behead­ing videos, the old ter­rors came back, and the Shia fled. There were no bat­tles to speak of, so there was no real demon­stra­tion of IS’s com­bat pow­er.

The Kurds—even light­ly armed vil­lagers like the ones who held off IS for so long—don’t scare easy. They faced down Saddam’s army, and IS is no more than the dregs of that army, mang­i­er but no mean­er. So the Kurds stood and fought, even though they were bad­ly out­gunned. And what they demon­strat­ed is that, faced with dis­ci­plined oppo­si­tion, IS is such a weak com­bat force that it could not take a small town 25 km from its base of oper­a­tions, even after bulk­ing up and wast­ing 15 months prob­ing its defens­es.

And now, any chance IS had of even hold­ing onto its gains in the hills around Kobani is gone. You can’t con­duct Toy­ota-blitzkrieg, the only form of war­fare IS does well, under con­stant air attack. Now that the Kurds of Kobani are being rein­forced by PKK units from Turkey (in spite of every­thing the Turks are doing to try to stop them), IS will fall back on Jarabulus—their ridicu­lous lit­tle “emirate”—and take it out on their usu­al vic­tims, any woman who was born in the wrong cult, wears the wrong veil, or dares to talk back.

So yeah, IS real­ly is as bad as they’re made out to be, but we’re talk­ing “bad” in both sens­es: They’re misog­y­nis­tic swine, but they’re also real­ly the most over­rat­ed, over-hyped bunch of hams this side of WWE. And when more peo­ple real­ize that, IS will lose their best weapon, their ter­ror-pro­pa­gan­da. With­out that, they show up as what they are: a mid-size Sun­ni mili­tia with a knack for child-rape and no skills against any­one who doesn’t fall for their death-met­al hype.

While the world obvi­ous­ly needs to find some sort of long-term solu­tion (a Mar­shall Plan for the Mid­dle East?) for the Sun­ni pop­u­la­tions that have been left so hope­less that ISIS start­ed seem­ing like the best bet for a bet­ter life, over­es­ti­mat­ing ISIS’s mil­i­tary pow­er and reach as part of a short-term ral­ly­ing cry for build­ing an anti-ISIS coali­tion does­n’t seem like appro­pri­ate way to go about this. Espe­cial­ly since ISIS’s major pow­er grab came pri­mar­i­ly through the moral col­lapse of the Iraq army as opposed to ISIS’s mil­i­tary might. As Brech­er points out, giv­ing ISIS cred­it where cred­it isn’t due only real­ly helps one group of peo­ple: ISIS. Ok, maybe two groups.

ISIS is symp­tom, it is not the prob­lem.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L‑4577648,00.html

Report: Islam­ic State to wage war on Iran for its nuclear secrets

Sun­day Times cites man­i­festo writ­ten by mem­ber of ISIS war coun­cil, propos­ing to offer Rus­sia con­trol of Anbar gas fields in return for Moscow cut­ting ties with Tehran and hand­ing over its nuclear knowhow.

Ynet­news
Pub­lished: 10.05.14, 08:19 / Israel News

The Islam­ic State is prepar­ing to wage war on Iran in order to obtain the secrets of its nuclear pro­gram, accord­ing to a man­i­festo attrib­uted to a mem­ber of the Islam­ic State war cab­i­net uncov­ered by the Sun­day Times.

The man­i­festo, believed to have been writ­ten by Abdul­lah Ahmed al-Meshedani, calls on ISIS mil­i­tants to pre­pare for war against the Islam­ic Repub­lic.

The doc­u­ment, thought to be a pol­i­cy man­i­festo pre­pared for senior mem­bers of the orga­ni­za­tion’s lead­er­ship, was found in the home of one of the ISIS com­man­ders dur­ing a Iraqi spe­cial forces raid in March, the paper report­ed.

West­ern secu­ri­ty offi­cials believe the doc­u­ment to be authen­tic.

Accord­ing to the doc­u­ment uncov­ered by the British news­pa­per, ISIS intends to obtain Iran’s nuclear secrets through Rus­sia. The orga­ni­za­tion will offer Rus­sia access to Iraqi gas fields it seized in the Anbar area in return for Moscow cut­ting its ties with Tehran and pass on Iran’s nuclear knowhow to ISIS.

Moscow must also cut its ties with the regime of Bashar Assad in Syr­ia, and move its sup­port to Sun­ni Gulf states oppos­ing the Shi­ite Aya­tol­lah regime.

Iran’s Bushehr nuclear pow­er plant was built by Russ­ian con­trac­tor Atom­stroy­ex­port as part of a con­tract signed between Tehran and the Russ­ian Min­istry for Atom­ic Ener­gy in 1995. In Sep­tem­ber 2013, oper­a­tional con­trol of the pow­er plant was trans­ferred from Rus­sia to the Islam­ic Repub­lic.

Al-Meshedani, respon­si­ble for recruit­ment of for­eign fight­ers for ISIS, also calls for “Nazi-style eugen­ics” as well as the killing of shi­ite Iraqi offi­cials, mil­i­tary lead­ers and mem­bers of Iran­ian-backed mili­tias.

Accord­ing to the doc­u­ment, the Islam­ic State aims to strip Iran of “all its pow­er,” by tar­get­ing Iran­ian diplo­mats and busi­ness­men and prof­itable Iran­ian indus­tries like its caviar and car­pet indus­tries.

Iran has warned that it would attack Islam­ic State group jihadists inside Iraq if they advance near the bor­der.

“If the ter­ror­ist group (IS) come near our bor­ders, we will attack deep into Iraqi ter­ri­to­ry and we will not allow it to approach our bor­der,” the offi­cial IRNA news agency quot­ed ground forces com­man­der Gen­er­al Ahmad Reza as say­ing last month.

Iran is a close ally of the Shi­ite-led gov­ern­ment in Iraq and has been unusu­al­ly accept­ing of US mil­i­tary action in Iraq against the jihadists, but has crit­i­cised air strikes on Syr­ia, say­ing they would not help restore sta­bil­i­ty in the region.

It has pro­vid­ed sup­port to both the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and Iraqi Kur­dish forces fight­ing the jihadists and has dis­patched weapons and mil­i­tary advis­ers.

Iran and the Unit­ed States were said to be dis­cussing pos­si­ble coop­er­a­tion against Islam­ic State in Sep­tem­ber, but both coun­tries have since ruled it out.