ISIL falls into a trap in Kobane

Recently, pictures taken on the border between Turkey and Syria showed a curious sight: A line on Turkish tanks pointed toward a town where ISIL forces were attacking Kurdish defenders. The tanks were sitting there, watching in a row, while in the valley below, people were being killed.

The Turkish tanks were respecting a traditional convention that is rapidly becoming obsolete. They were stopping at an international border. I say it is becoming obsolete because so many wars are being fought without traditional borders. ISIL, the military force that the Turks were watching on that border, has been attacking places in Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Part of their success comes from their ability to attack across borders, then retreat to their strongholds in Syria.

The terrible situation in Syria is another reason why borders are obsolete. The UN protocols for war crimes and human rights crimes are predicated on a country's borders being inviolate. The UN Charter and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court both condemn wars of aggression, which are wars where one country attacks another without itself being threatened. This opposition to wars of aggression implies that sovereign nations should never be attacked by other nations without provocation.

The sole exception to this rule would seem to be whenever an attack receives the approval of the UN Security Council. The Security Council is a political body, however. It is likely that any decision to sanction an action taken by the Security Council will have opposition, regardless of how justified the action may be.

In this case, when Turkey lines its tanks up on the Syrian border, Turkey is presumably defending itself from attack while at the same time observing the UN prohibitions on aggressive war. Neither of these presumptions are likely to be true. The Turkish tanks, while motionless are actually preventing ISIL forces from retreating into Turkey along a long, somewhat porous border. The Turks are supporting the efforts of American and Arab jets, who have been relentlessly pounding ISIL positions with high explosives. So there is a battle going on here that violates the UN Charter, but one could argue it does not violate the natural laws that require the strong to protect the weak.

The residents of Kobane are not, strictly speaking, Syrians. They belong to a Kurdish minority and practice a form of Islam known as Shi'a. The people attacking them right now are Sunni Moslems, but so are the Turks who are protecting them. More than 100,000 refugees, many of them Kurds, have crossed the border into Turkey. So the tanks are protecting those refugees.

The tanks are on the high ground, solemn and still. The fighters of ISIL do not dare to attack them. Although the fighters in Iraq's army may be badly trained and poorly motivated, this is not true of the Turkish army. Young Turkish men must serve in the army for 6 to 12 months, which receives weapons from the US and other NATO countries. This service is seen as a patriotic duty by the Turks.

ISIL has a fighting force of approximately 35,000 men. Their propaganda claims they are an unbeatable force of highly motivated muslim fighters. Recent American tv shows have bolstered the claims of ISIL by attacking all Muslims as sympathizers with ISIL and its tactics. ISIL has seized several cities and gained control of western Iraq, but their force is still small and they have few allies in the region. Saudi Arabia has admitted giving aid to ISIL at one time, but official spokesmen have asserted that that the aid has been stopped.

It has been estimated that 500 ISIL fighters have been killed by these multi-national air attacks. An additional 1500 have likely been seriously wounded. Therefore, ISIL has lost 5% of its entire army in the attack on Kobane. This fact supports the idea that the anti-ISIL forces have been using Kobane as a killing ground, a place where ISIL fighters have been lured in with the prospect of an easy victory.

The dedication of ISIL fighters, who are advertised (by ISIL) as fierce jihadis, has also been brought into question by testimony from a captured ISIL member.  He has admitted fighting with ISIL, but says he was forced by threat of beheading to join the battle. He also says that ISIL drugs young men before sending them out as suicide bombers.

There may be some doubt as to the veracity of this young man's story, but there is no doubt that ISIL would use those tactics--and worse--to recruit new fighters.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-2792334/Anger-wounded-Syria-Kurds-die-stranded-Turkish-border.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2802899/join-die-isis-fighter-15-says-jihadis-threatened-behead-didn-t-join-ranks-describes-young-men-drugged-forced-suicide-attacks.html

Leon Panetta Told Obama to Attack; Obama Said No

Leon Panetta, who headed both the CIA and the Department of Defense under President Obama, has written a book about his experiences in government with the Clintons and Obama. Naturally, he is taking this opportunity to kick Obama and fawn on Hilary Clinton.

Clinton and Panetta both called for Obama to attack Syria when Syria used chemical weapons against fellow Syrians.

President Obama had called the use of chemical weapons there a “red line.” So when the Syrian military used chemical weapons in August 2013 to kill an estimated 1,400 people, Obama decided to strike. But then the president abruptly reversed himself—without consulting his national security Cabinet members.

But Obama resisted their calls for war. Instead, he participated in a deal brokered by the UN and Russia in which Assad promised to give up his chemical weapons voluntarily. No Americans dead. No Syrian civilians killed by gas.

But this outcome did not satisfy Panetta, who writes,

The result, I felt, was a blow to American credibility. When the president as commander in chief draws a red line, it is critical that he act if the line is crossed. The power of the United States rests on its word,” he wrote. “Assad’s action clearly defied President Obama’s warning; by failing to respond, it sent the wrong message to the world.

The neocons and now Panetta and Clinton, who are being called neoliberals, are always concerned that other nations will disrespect the US if we don't reach for our guns whenever someone steps out of line. This makes no sense at all. The rest of the world will respect the US if we live up to our ideals. They will fear us if we constantly attack countries on the slightest provocation, such as when we attacked Iraq for having weapons of mass destruction which they didn't have.

The US public may still believe that Bush and the neocons did not make the whole story up, but the rest of the world is convinced that they did. The lies told in the UN Security Council hurt our credibility a great deal more than any failure to enforce a "red line" could ever do.

According to Panetta, Obama made a big mistake by refusing to listen to Hilary and himself on backing Syrian rebels. The Daily Beast quotes Panetta as saying,

Hesitation and half steps have consequences as well—and those remain to be determined.

Actually, the consequences of backing muslim jihadists are well known. Against the Russians in Afghanistan, the US backed Osama bin Laden and helped him build up Al Qaeda. As has been shown in recent weeks, the Syrian rebels included ISIL, another group of fundamentalist jihadis. They are using captured US weapons to create havoc along the borders of Syria, Turkey, and Iraq.

Obama should be commended for trying a different approach in the Middle East. Sending American aid and American soldiers proves nothing but does recruit new Islamists eager to fight the Americans. Obama's strategy could be summarized as, "Don't poke the bear." So far, Obama has been successful keeping us from entering another bloody conflict.

Not deterred from his questionable agenda, Panetta believes Obama should ally himself with opponents of Assad. He says we would at least know whether there are any moderate Muslims fighting Assad. He doesn't prove that would be important, however.

The difference between Obama and Panetta--and, by extension Hilary Clinton--boils down to this: Obama wants to end existing wars and takes risks to do so; Panetta wants to start existing wars to prove that America is the biggest and toughest country in the world.

Panetta wasted no time after resigning from the CIA before joining a small lobbying firm in Washington. His book is doubtless his first step in recruiting new clients from the military industrial complex. No principled American should become a lobbyist seeking to spend more money on weapons of war.

During the fight over the sequester, Panetta was the only cabinet member who testified before congress that cutting the defense budget would harm the US military. The others probably obeyed Obama's instruction. If Panetta had succeeded in raising the military budget during the sequester, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party would have opposed the budget deal.

Panetta is a risk-taker, sure of his own prowess. Obama is risk averse. We should all become more like Obama in this.

NY Post publishes fictional article on war in the middle east, calls it news

An article has appeared in the New York Post, presumably to convince us all how dangerous ISIL is. They have lots of money, see?

This article uses a lot of guesswork. It says ISIL is smuggling oil by paying off border guards. Smuggling oil is awfully hard by truck and oil trucks make easy targets in the middle of the desert.

The article says ISIL controls "up to 11" oilfields. In other words, the "intelligence sources" have no idea how much oil ISIL has or whether ISIL are successful pumping it and selling it. Maybe ISIL, primarily an army of thugs, can pump oil. Maybe they can't. In any event, the oil fields can be shut down quickly with a couple of drone strikes.

The article says ISIL is getting money through extortion and other criminal enterprises. That is entirely believable. But money is hard to hide and ISIL won't have an easy time buying weapons with it

UNLESS

The US goes ahead with its idiotic plan to arm anti-Syrian rebels, who are known to be allies of ISIL. Then the anti-Syrian rebels, our supposed allies, will be able to sell weapons to ISIL, and the US will find itself giving weapons to the group it claims to be fighting.

War Against ISIL: The arms merchants can't survive without another decade of war

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is an Islamic military group that has seized a large area of land that used to belong to Syria and Iraq. ISIL has a Sunni Muslim orientation, not coincidentally the same orientation as Saddam Hussein, former dictator of Iraq. Many people do not realize that ISIL has the same basic religious philosophy as Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, although ISIL takes it to a different level of violence and intolerance.

Wahhabism is a fundamentalist strain of Islam. The Saudis adopted Wahhabism because they needed to kill other muslims to take over the Arabian Peninsula, and Wahhabism gave them the philosophical excuse to do so. According to Wahhabism, many traditional practices of ordinary Muslims are sacrilegious. So, although the Koran forbids the killing of a Moslem, Wahhabism practically advocates it.

Saudi Arabia has used its treasure from oil to spread Wahhabism throughout the muslim world. Wahhabism preaches the responsibility of Jihad against muslim heretics. The Saudi royal family has done this to cement its self-proclaimed role as guardians of Islam and protectors of Islam's holiest sites: Mecca and Medina.

It was only a matter of time before other groups jumped on the Saudi's extremest bandwagon and started to play the favorite game of conservatives, "Who's the most regressive?" Osama Bin Laden played this game by attacking the "great Satan", the Saudi family's close ally, America. Now ISIL is playing the same game, this time by advertising itself as a pure form of Islam that will not tolerate any foreigners on the soil of the Caliphate.

The Caliph was called the Protector of the Two Sanctuaries, i.e., Mecca and Medina, the role that the Saudis have played for the last century. The Saudis are much more concerned about ISIL as rivals than they were about Saddam Hussein, because Hussein was no threat to supplant them as a religious leader. They did not join George Bush's war against Saddam, but they have already promised air support for the war against ISIL.

While ISIL is a threat to the Saudis and to Syria, they are not much of a threat to the US. ISIL has only regional appeal and power. They are not much worse than the Saudis in terms of their oppressive laws. Look at the laws of Saudi Arabia and you will see that ISIL is their clone.

Now Barack Obama has promised to destroy ISIL. On the face of it, this promise appears less ambitious than Bush's promise to destroy all terrorists, everywhere. Certainly the campaign to destroy ISIL has a stated goal. Like the Iraq War, however, the war against ISIL could be long and costly, once again playing a role in the politics of the Middle East.

While the war against ISIL has a goal and a definite purpose, it is just as open-ended as the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan. It is a war against an ideology, not a political state. Weapons that kill people have little effect on ideologies other than to intensify them.

Obama should have refrained from making war on ISIL. It's not clear why he chose to fight openly against ISIL but not against Syria. Perhaps he is afraid that ISIL will defeat Syria in the bloody civil war they have been fighting in that country. If so, he has made a critical error, committing America to a war because he is afraid of the consequences of not fighting.

The US should not be fighting in the Middle East, or anywhere else for that matter. To do so will further erode our national treasure and push our people further into poverty and despair. Money that should go to help the people will instead to to the arms merchants and their pawns in the Congress. This is a dark day for America, only the latest in a series of dark days.