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.

Obama's decision not to intervene in Syria was a wise one

ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) crossed from Syria into Iraq last week. In short order they seized Mosul, Tikrit, and some other, smaller towns near the Syrian Border. Videos showed Iraqi government soldiers removing their uniforms and fleeing their posts before ISIS arrived. American commentators dismissed their actions as cowardice in the face of the enemy. But it was not cowardice. It was merely an attempt at self-preservation.

Videos released later by ISIS showed in gruesome detail what happened to soldiers who were captured by the invaders. The Iraqi soldiers were rounded up and shot. We need to recognize that the Iraqi soldiers, mostly Shi'ite, who were posted in Mosul and Tikrit were not defending their homeland. They were deep inside enemy territory. Those who could not escape to Baghdad could not be certain of survival, for the people of the region oppose the Iraqi government installed by the American army. The Shi'ite soldiers had no place to hide and no one to aid them.

ISIS had been fighting against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator. These were the same fighters that neocons and John McCain had been urging Obama to support. ISIS is aligned with former supporters of Saddam Hussein. They are Sunni Muslims who have a much stronger allegiance to their religious faith than to any government. They are also one of the main forces that have been opposing the Americans in Iraq. Supporting these people would have been a major blunder, akin to the mistake made by the CIA in Operation Cyclone, which led to the empowerment of Osama bin Laden.

We should understand the alignment of forces in the Middle East.

Iran is the leading Shi'ite state. Other Shi'ite leaders are Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki.

Saudi Arabia is the leading Sunni State. Saddam Hussein was Sunni. So was Osama bin Laden. There are powerful Sunni forces in Iraq and Syria, where they oppose the current governments.

The wars in the Middle East between Muslim states since WWII can be viewed as proxy wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia for control of the region. The United States has sided with Saudi Arabia consistently during this entire period, despite the fact that the two countries have little in common aside from an interest in oil.

Sanity seems at last to have reached into the American government. Our intelligence agencies have failed to provide accurate information to our decision makers. Even Jimmy Carter was not immune to the belief that Afghanistan's war against the Soviet Union was somehow a danger to the US.

We don't know what intelligence reports led Obama to decide against intervention in Syria. Perhaps he knew more about the makeup of the rebel force opposing Assad than the rest of us. Or perhaps he was wary about any intelligence he received from the CIA, since they had failed so utterly in this region in the past. Whatever his reasons, Obama made the right choice. The US now enjoys the enviable position of watching chaos from the outside rather than having it falling on our heads.

Message for President Obama: War is Obsolete

Warfare as practiced by European nations has been obsolete since World War I. Sometimes the news travels slowly. There are always sociopaths like Bashar Al-Assad and Saddam Hussein who don't understand the dark side of power and are willing to use war to hold on to their positions.

War was already obsolete when an anarchist's bomb took the life of Austrian Arch-Duke Ferdinand in 1914. The great powers of the day—England, France, Germany, Russia, Austria—didn't realize the futility of war then, but they were about to find out.

The great powers developed a system whereby one power would threaten another with war unless some condition were met. The weaker side would give in quickly to avoid being obliterated. But the Great Powers kept on using the threat of war to get their own way, just as the playground bully shakes his fist and menaces the other children.

World War I changed all that. The Great Powers were throwing their military weight around as usual but no one backed down. Nearly all the countries in Europe became involved in a deadly conflict which was marked by wide-spread use of poison gas and the newly invented machine gun. Thirty-seven million people died. Governments toppled in Germany, Russia, and France. Countries fell apart—The Ottoman Empire split into numerous small states that are still causing trouble today: Iraq and Syria were created from remnants of the Ottoman Empire.

The Great Powers of Europe were humbled by their losses. They promised never to fight each other again. And so they didn't, for 20 years, until another huge war broke out between them that truly engulfed the entire world. More than 60 million people died in that war.

As a result of these 2 disastrous wars, the European powers gave up trying to bully other nations. They created the United Nations and signed treaties promising not to attack other nations without just cause. Today, only one country, the United States, still believes in Great Power politics. It still threatens other, weaker countries, and goes to war if its demands aren't met.

Under Presidents Reagan, the two Bushes, and Clinton, the U.S. continued to attack countries with an enormous military machine. In 2008, the citizens of the U.S. elected Barack Obama instead of John McCain as their president, at least partly because they though Obama would end wars rather than start them. Obama has ended wars, though not as quickly as we had hoped. McCain, from his seat in the Senate, kept on urging Obama to start new wars. But Obama resisted the temptation.

Now, Obama seems to have fallen under the influence of bad advisors. These advisors, including some in the military and many in the press, have urged him to attack Syria because of the atrocities committed by the Syrian government against its own people. Eventually, Obama decided to attack Syria to “punish” the regime for using chemical weapons.

Obama forgot that war itself is an atrocity. If we attack another country to punish it for going to war, we become the war mongers, the killers of civilians, the agents of death and destruction. If we attack Syria, the world press will be filled for years with pictures of victims of American aggression and our hospitals will be filled with our own wounded soldiers.

Nothing can be achieved by war that cannot be achieved more cheaply and with less destruction by other means. Syria's government should be made to pay for its atrocities, but the people should be spared further suffering at our hands. The proper forum for punishment is the International Criminal Court, where Bashar Assad and his cronies will be prosecuted alongside the perpetrators of violence in Kenya, Uganda, Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, and Mali.

The way to deal with Assad and his ilk is through diplomacy and economic pressure. All of these perpetrators have bank accounts outside Syria. We should freeze their assets. We know (or can discover) the companies who are selling them arms. We should put pressure on those companies to change their ways if they want to stay in business.

Putin has taken center stage in Syria. He wants to be considered an important player on the world scene. He wants Russia to return to her time of greatness. In other words, he wants to start up the Great Powers game again.

America cannot counter the Putins of the world if our hands are not clean. We can't credibly attack Syria for using poison gas if we supplied Saddam Hussein with poison gas to use against Iran. The Iranians are going to remember that. We can't credibly attack Assad for murdering his own citizens in a civil war when we started a war in Iraq that resulted in more than 115,000 civilians killed by violence. It may be that our actions in Iraq were less intentional than Assad's in Syria. But our intervention in Iraq was a violation of the UN Charter and an unintentional death is still a death that would not have happened without U.S. intervention.

Barack Obama came to the Presidency with little or no foreign policy experience. He had served in the Senate for only two years. He had drawn attention to himself by opposing the Iraq War, but had little knowledge of the machinery of war, armies, weapons, spies. The American war machine was complex, since the American people were not militaristic but presidents wanted to carry on war continuously nevertheless.

Obama promised to end the Iraq War and expand the Afghan War to find Osama Bin Laden. He fell into the traps set for him by the generals. They told him they would win the Afghan war with just a few more troops. The Surge, they called it. Obama believed them and gave his approval to the tactic.

The Surge in Afghanistan was expensive and gained nothing, no territory, no strategic advantage, no improvement. After the Surge, Obama stopped approving new initiatives in Afghanistan and began an inevitable drawdown that would lead to withdrawal.

Obama was suspicious of his generals, but he accepted their philosophy of American power. They told him that America must prove she is a SuperPower. She must impose her will around the world. If necessary, she must use force, to prove her strength to her enemies. Then they waited for an opportunity to become involved in another war.

American militarists believe the America has a right to attack any country in the world if that country is harming its citizens or neighbors. Obama certainly knew international law, which states that any intervention in the affairs of a sovereign country is a violation. The militarists chose their issue well. Obama has two daughters and loves them. He was blinded by his love for the children who lost their lives in Syria. The militarists were gleeful. They foresaw another decade of war.

But Obama disappointed them. Not only was the plan illegal, the American people opposed it. He gave up his plan of revenge. The militarists were stunned. They called him vacillating and weak. Nicolas Kristof, no militarist, claimed the American president must keep his word, once given. This is nonsense. Everyone has the right to change his mind.

So the Great Power theory of foreign policy is moribund. If America will not play the game, no one will. The other countries of the world must take up the challenge. Acting together, they must uphold international law.

War is henceforward obsolete and now everyone knows it.

War and Peace: Obama's other options

President Obama has proposed taking military action to punish Bashar Al-Assad for using chemical weapons against his own people. Obama argues that permitting this use to pass unpunished would make it easier for other nations or terrorist groups to use chemical weapons against us and our allies.

I applaud Obama for his demonstration of humanity and compassion. Clinton and G.W. Bush used to speak about compassion, but they did so to justify inhumane acts, such as persecuting welfare recipients or starting wars in distant countries. Obama evidently believes in the rule of law. He believes that those who break the law must be punished in order for justice to be done.

Obama's heart is in the right place. But he is wrong about how to punish the Assad regime. Dropping bombs on Syria will only harm the Syrian people, not the dictator who is killing them. It will also continue the cycle of vengeance that laws were invented to prevent.

The cycle of vengeance is familiar to every student of history. If you attack me, or my friend, I will attack you, harder if possible. Then you will have to attack me to retain your self-respect. There is no end to this cycle.

The cycle of vengeance drives politics in the Middle East. Some Americans urge action against Assad because our enemies will not respect (or fear) us if we do nothing. People who say this believe that the cycle of vengeance can be ended by one more violent action, ours. They are obviously wrong. Our enemies take actions against us every day. Far from being deterred by our posturing, they are emboldened by it. Our acts of war convince people that we are a violent, lawless nation. The people of the world are more—not less—likely to oppose us because of violent actions we have taken and those we may make in the future.

Obama finds himself president of the strongest military power in the world. He also has a strong empathy for the people suffering in Syria. He believes he is the only one in the world who can aid the Syrians. We should applaud his motives, but not his intentions.

Obama can take many actions to further world peace without dropping bombs on anyone.

The United States should rejoin the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The US helped to set up these courts to handle international cases, but in recent years the US has become more isolated in the world, refusing to participate in world justice organizations because rulings have gone against us or our allies. When Assad finishes his reign of terror in Syria, the ICC will try him for crimes against humanity. Most likely he will be found guilty and punished for his crimes. That trial and punishment will be an example to other rulers that their crimes will not go unnoticed by the rest of the world.

The United States should call on all nations to stop providing aid and weapons to the Assad regime or to the opposition forces. The US should use its other great power, its wealth, to enforce this boycott. The US should call for all nations and corporations to divest themselves of economic instruments that support corporations engaged in warfare around the world.

Weapons do not magically come into existence. Corporations produce them and profit from their sales. The US should call on all corporations to stop providing such weapons to countries that abuse them. Corporations that fail to cooperate should be taxed to ensure that they do not profit from exporting misery.

Just as the US should convert to a green economy, it should also convert to a peace economy. In a peace economy, every economic decision that promotes peace is rewarded. Every economic action that promotes war is punished, not by bombs, but by economic disincentives.

The so-called war on terror has proven that the vast strength of our military is useless against a tiny, ragged band of committed soldiers. Our only safety comes from convincing people that they have nothing to gain from violence and everything to lose.

Genocide in Syria: The world must put an end to it

The Syrian civil war is a particularly horrendous one. It is comparable to the Rwandan civil war of 1990-1994 in which over 500,000 people were killed by the government and another two million forced to flee the country. Both wars were started by rogue governments who used propaganda to incite violence against minority populations. There have been over 100,000 deaths in the Syrian civil war, and perhaps a million refugees, who have fled to Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan.

The war in Rwanda was called a genocide. The war in Syria is now approaching the same level of violence. The UN failed to stop the former. Right now, the UN is standing by and watching the slaughter of Syrians by the thousands.

The civil war is between the Government of Syria and its opposition, which calls itself the Free Syrian Army. The primary supporters of Assad are the Allawites, a Shi'ite sect that comprises only 10 percent of the population. Assad receives weapons and money from Russia and Iran, whose rulers are also Shi'a, and military assistance from Hezbollah. Hezbollah, founded by Iran, are a state within a state in Lebanon, with perhaps 200,000 supporters and a battle-hardened militia.

The Free Syrian Army and its allies forces are primarily Sunni. They receive weapons primarily from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Syrian Government forces, supporters of Bashar Al-Assad, have used all the weapons of a modern military state in their campaign to remain in power. The US has condemned them for their use of chemical weapons, including the nerve-gas rison, but most of the deaths have been caused by conventional means, especially artillery shells and cluster bombs. Government forces are targeting civilians in hope of convincing them to stop sheltering the rebels.

The grotesque spectacle of a government killing its own people to stay in power has aroused the anger of much of the world. Russia and Iran are unmoved, however. The United Nations is powerless to provide military aid because Russia holds a permanent seat on the Security Council. At news that Assad may have used sarin gas against his people, Vladimir Putin said it didn't make any sense that Assad should use sarin against the rebels in a war that he was winning. Therefore, Putin theorized, the attacks, though real, were actually provocations intended to draw other nations into the war on the side of the rebels.

Putin's logic is faulty. Chemical weapons will not help Assad win the war, but that is not Assad's problem. He must win the peace. Since Assad's power base is the Allawite minority, just 10 percent of Syria's population, he needs to find some way to exercise authority over the Syrians after the war is over. Assad has chosen terror, as his father and Saddam Hussein did before him. Saddam used chemical weapons successfully to win his war with Iran and terrorize his own countrymen.

President Obama announced that the use of chemical weapons is a red line that Assad must not be allowed to cross with impunity. The US president says that chemical weapons pose a threat to the entire world, and that other countries will use them unless the US takes military action to “punish” Assad. Obama cannot seriously believe that the US can make a surgical strike and withdraw from the engagement. His military commanders must have told him that would be impossible. Assad has been telling his countrymen that Obama delayed his plans because he feared the reprisals that Assad would make.

Obama asked friday, "What's the purpose of the international system that we've built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world's people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?" In this sentence, as in others, Obama has spoken not just for himself and the American people, but for peace-loving people everywhere.

Obama never actually intended to do anything without Congressional approval. Right on cue, over 100 house members signed a letter to the president stating that engaging the military without prior congressional authorization would violate the separation of powers delineated in the Constitution. Twenty-one Democrats joined Republicans in signing the letter. But Obama knew that House Republicans would oppose any action he might take. Many of them were waiting to see what would happen before making any statement. By delaying any action, Obama forces his political opponents to take a position on the record. He also emphasizes the fact that they are all on vacation and unwilling to return, while he is on the job in Washington.

Obama has given the English parliament what it asked for when it defeated Prime Minister Cameron's motion to support a strike against Syria. The English opposition insisted that Cameron should wait for the UN inspectors to file their report on the evidence of chemical weapons. Now they have their wish.

Finally, Obama has put pressure on the United Nations. It is the UN that proposed and ratified the international system that is supposed to safeguard human rights. But the UN system for enforcing its treaties depends on unanimous consent and is therefore seldom invoked. Outside observers have declared that the US cannot interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. The UN has declared that chemical weapons must not be used in warfare. Now would be a good time for the UN to prove that it, not the US, enforces international law. Genocide, not just chemical weapons use, is a crime against humanity.