Unstable and Impeached, Trump Pushes USA Toward War with Iran

Many of us knew it was only a matter of time before Donald Trump's ignorance, impulsiveness and narcissism would land America in an international crisis.  Now, in the wake of Trump's assassination of Iran's top general - a number of legal scholars have made the case that a bad actor or not, the assassination was on questionable legal foundation under international law - American lives are at risk.  Meanwhile, America's allies are likely to stand aside and it is difficult to not wonder whether or not Trump's true motivation for the assassination was to distract Americans from the impeachment process and the continued stream of additional damning information against Trump, a proverbial "wag the dog " move.  Now, Iran has fired on American troops in Iraq even as Iraq moves to have those same troops evicted from that country.  Would Trump endanger American lives to further his own interests?  You'd better believe it - just ask the Ukrainians. Trump cares for no one but himself and those who think otherwise are, in my view, fools.  Americans and others will die because of this malignant occupant of the White House.  A column in the New York Times looks at the nightmare descending on the nation:.  Here are excerpts:

There are no more adults in the room.

After three harrowing years, we’ve reached the point many of us feared from the moment Donald Trump was elected. His decision to kill Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s second most important official, made at Mar-a-Lago with little discernible deliberation, has brought the United States to the brink of a devastating new conflict in the Middle East.

We don’t yet know how Iran will retaliate, or whether all-out war will be averted. But already, NATO has suspended its mission training Iraqi forces to fight ISIS. Iraq’s Parliament has voted to expel American troops — a longtime Iranian objective. . . . On Sunday, Iran said it will no longer be bound by the remaining restrictions on its nuclear program in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal that Trump abandoned in 2018. Trump has been threatening to commit war crimes by destroying Iran’s cultural sites and tried to use Twitter to notify Congress of his intention to respond to any Iranian reprisals with military escalation.

The administration has said that the killing of Suleimani was justified by an imminent threat to American lives, but there is no reason to believe this. One skeptical American official told The New York Times that the new intelligence indicated nothing but “a normal Monday in the Middle East,” and Democrats briefed on it were unconvinced by the administration’s case.

Rather than self-defense, the Suleimani killing seems like the dreadful result of several intersecting dynamics. There’s the influence of rapture-mad Iran hawks like Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence. Defense officials who might have stood up to Trump have all left the administration.Trump likely had mixed motives. He was reportedly upset over TV images of militia supporters storming the American Embassy in Iraq. According to The Post, he also was frustrated by “negative coverage” of his decision last year to order and then call off strikes on Iran.

Beyond that, Trump, now impeached and facing trial in the Senate, has laid out his rationale over years of tweets. [Trump] The president is a master of projection, and his accusations against others are a decent guide to how he himself will behave. . . . . To Trump, a wag-the-dog war with Iran evidently seemed like a natural move for a president in trouble.

It’s hard to see how this ends without disaster. Defenders of Trump’s move have suggested that he might have re-established deterrence against Iran, frightening its leadership into restraint. But Vali Nasr, a Middle East scholar at Johns Hopkins University and former senior adviser to Obama’s State Department, tells me that Iran likely believes that it has to re-establish deterrence against the United States.

“If they don’t do anything, or if they don’t do enough, then Trump will get comfortable with this kind of behavior, and that worries them,” said Nasr. To Iranians, after all, America is the aggressor, scrapping a nuclear agreement that they were abiding by and imposing a punishing “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign. Just like militarists in the United States, they’re likely to assume that weakness invites attacks. “I don’t think they want to provoke war, but they do want to send a signal that they’re prepared for it,” said Nasr.

Meanwhile, ISIS benefits from the breach between Iraq and America. . . . . These networks will regenerate rapidly if we are forced to leave, and they will again turn their attention on the West.”

Unlike with North Korea, it’s difficult to imagine any photo op or exchange of love letters defusing the crisis the president has created. Most of this country has never accepted Trump, but over the past three years, many have gotten used to him, lulled into uneasy complacency by an establishment that has too often failed to treat him as a walking national emergency. Now the nightmare phase of the Trump presidency is here. The biggest surprise is that it took so long.

Trump must be removed by any means necessary.

Trump’s Ignorance Has Created an International Crisis

Huge crowds in Tehran.

Nothing is more dangerous than someone who is ignorant and poorly informed yet thinks them-self brilliant and knowledgeable, if not more knowledgeable than all others.  Pair this ignorance with a malignant narcissist personality disorder and the danger increases exponentially.   Yet this is the reality of the nature of the person now in the White House.  A person who cares noting about the harm he does to others so long his ego is satiated.  Now, America and the world face an international crisis with Iran - a nation far larger, wealthy and educated than Iraq - was in 2003 - because of the actions of this uncontrollable narcissist.  The only consolation, if it can be called such, is that Iran has suggested that it might target Trump properties for its retaliation.   In a column in the Washington Post former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough looks at the danger the nation faces - all because of Trump's actions.  Here are column highlights:

During the early morning hours of Sept. 15, 1950, Gen. Douglas MacArthur would lead U.S. troops on the most audacious amphibious landing in U.S. history. The assault at Inchon in South Korea was viewed beforehand as being so reckless that the Joint Chiefs of Staff dismissed the proposal out of hand. “We drew up a list of every conceivable and natural handicap,” one naval officer remembered later, “and Inchon had them all.”

MacArthur’s arrogant belief in his own infallibility allowed him to see opportunity where others saw only peril. But the legendary general brought more than a bloated ego to battle; he also carried with him a mastery of military history and, with it, the knowledge of Japan’s successful 1904 landing at the same treacherous port. That insight served MacArthur well and reversed, almost overnight, the grim trajectory of America’s so-called Forgotten War.

President Trump’s decision last week to assassinate the most powerful military figure in the Middle East was, likewise, audacious. But unlike MacArthur at Inchon, Trump likely did not grasp the gravity of his decision. How could he? The former reality-TV star has long been ignorant of world history and current events. During a 2015 interview, then-candidate Trump did not even know who Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani was.

The danger posed by that ignorance is matched daily by the crises created by Trump’s own erraticism. His performance as commander in chief has been shaped by a collection of scattered grievances, emotional impulses and random tweets. As the Financial Times’s Philip Stephens has said of Trump’s foreign policy, “Looking for a framework is like searching for symmetrical patterns in a bowl of spaghetti.”

This is, after all, a president who spent last summer withholding military aid from a besieged democratic ally while pressuring its leaders to investigate a political opponent. Then, stepping in front of a bank of White House cameras, he asked the same of China.

Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior received much attention at the time, with the Associated Press’s Jonathan Lemire and Zeke Miller noting in July that the United States’ foreign policy had become unmoored after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and others were driven from the administration. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the Atlantic, followed with an article appropriately titled “He’s Getting Worse,” in which he glumly noted that “there is no reason to hope that he will reform.

His followers reward his radicalism and his handlers are among the most cynical figures in American political history.”

We now find ourselves living through a time when those same administration officials are providing reckless counsel to an ignorant and erratic president. Though he shares MacArthur’s sense of infallibility, Trump spends most of his waking hours showing the world just how fallible he is. Critics have long warned of a time when this fatally flawed man would be forced to confront an international crisis.

That time has arrived and it is a crisis of Trump’s own making.

Contrary to the vows of candidate Trump, it is likely that the killing of Soleimani will now only deepen U.S. involvement in a region that has already claimed too many American lives. With Russia firmly ensconced in Syria, Iraqi discontent on the rise and Iran’s nuclear program restarted, expect more Americans to die across the Middle East in the coming years. With his audacious attack, Trump has further isolated the United States from its allies, provided a lifeline to Iran’s terrorist regime and broken yet another of his campaign promises.

Inchon this is not.

And Trump is no MacArthur.

ISIS Beheads 15-Year-Old Iraqi Boy for Listening to Pop Music

ISIS continues to demonstrate the evils of religion as the Jerusalem Post reports that a 15 year old boy has been executed for listening to western pop music.  Hate, the embrace of ignorance and barbarity in the name of God, of course, are not unique to Islam, and if one knows the true history of Christianity, the death toll is enormous.  Yes, the photo above is disturbing, but one needs to look at it and remember that this is what happens when people put belief in mythical writings or, in the case of Islam the rantings of a lunatic above science, knowledge and decency towards others.  Here are story highlights:

Just when you thought the Islamic State had reached its limit of depravity, it manages to outdo itself.

According to Kurdish media reports, the jihadist group that has captured wide swaths of Syria and Iraq beheaded a 15-year-old boy in Mosul for the crime of listening to Western pop music.

Reports cite officials in the northern Iraqi city as saying that the boy, Ayham Hussein, was discovered by ISIS henchman as he was listening to a portable compact disc player.

Hussein was detained by ISIS operatives as he sat inside a shop owned by his father in an open-air market in western Mosul. The boy was beaten and tried in a local sharia court, which sentenced him to be executed.

“The boy was executed by beheading in a town square in the center of the city,” a source told Kurdish media. 

The execution shocked and angered Mosul residents, some of whom staged a protest at the home of the victim’s family.

A world free of all religion would likely be a far better world.  Religion's main fruits are death, division and hatred of others.   While ISIS is perhaps an extreme example of religion's poisonous effects, many evangelical Christians likewise harbor wide hatred of others.  Sadly, Americans and the media continue to give them a free pass.

Reflections on The Democratic Presidential Debate

Perhaps the most striking thing about the first Democratic presidential debate last night was the fact that real issues and policy considerations were discussed in sharp contrast to the Republican debates which so far have largely consisted of sound bites pushing the favorite racist and paranoia based concerns of the increasingly delusional GOP base and/or taking cheap shots at other candidates.  It's as if this debate involved adults versus the GOP debates where loud mouth bullies and story tellers have held sway.  The contrast is striking and ought to make thinking voters wonder WTF is wrong with the GOP field of clowns.   Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders dominated the debate with the others making some points but nonetheless in the shadows of Clinton and Sanders.  Hillary did a better job than I expected.  A column in the New York Times reflects thoughts similar to my own.  Here are highlights:

I never doubted that Hillary Clinton had many talents.  I just didn’t know that seamstress was among them.

There were moments in the first Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday night when she threaded the needle as delicately and perfectly as a politician could.

The debate’s moderator, Anderson Cooper, noted that she’d told some audiences that she was a progressive but extolled her moderation in front of others. Wasn’t she just a chameleon, flashing whatever colors suited her at a given moment?

“I’m a progressive, but I’m a progressive who likes to get things done,” she said strongly but not stridently. “I know how to find common ground and I know how to stand my ground.”

Even when she was confronted anew by her vote in the Senate long ago to authorize the invasion of Iraq, she was neither defiant nor apologetic, steering a smooth midcourse by recalling that at debates in 2008, Barack Obama had attacked her for that. “After the election,” she pointed out, “he asked me to become secretary of state. He valued my judgment.”

The subject of Iraq caused her less grief than Sanders suffered on gun control, when not only Clinton but also Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, rejected his explanation of votes in the Senate against various bills and his insistence that he was representing rural areas with gun cultures, not a nationwide electorate. It was clumsy because he presents himself as a creature of pure principle, immune to political convenience.

But on Tuesday night an odd sort of role reversal occurred. For much of the debate, Sanders somehow came across as the embattled incumbent, targeted by the other four candidates, while Clinton came across as the energetic upstart.

It was as poised a performance as she’s finessed in a long time, and while I’ve just about given up making predictions about this confounding election — I never thought Donald Trump would last so long, and I never saw Ben Carson coming — I think Clinton benefited more from Tuesday’s stage than Sanders did.

She mixed confidence and moments of passion with instances of humor, and her manner was less didactic and robotic than it can often be.

[S]he was seldom rattled, though the discussion of her use of a home-brewed server for her emails as secretary of state did prompt a visible stiffening of her posture, a conspicuous strain in her smile. Will she ever, ever find language that takes full ownership of her mistake and that puts real flesh on her continued claim that she’s being as transparent as possible?

It was perhaps Sanders’s best. Surprisingly, he called for an end to talk about the emails, saying there were more important issues to focus on. 

And she benefited from the visual contrast when she stood side by side on TV next to Sanders, with his slight hunch, his somewhat garbled style of speech, and a moment when he cupped his hand behind his ear, signaling that he hadn’t heard the question.

He evoked yesterday. Despite many decades in the political trenches, she didn’t. It was a nifty trick. Turns out she’s a bit of a sorceress as well.

Why Iran Wants a Nuclear Arms Deal

Across the GOP, climate deniers avoid a serious discussion on the issue by saying "I'm not a scientist" or similar bullshit.  Yet when it comes to nuclear arms, the same know nothing crowd suddenly pretends to be experts that know more than the experts.  They also seem clueless on the issue of why Iran may want an arms deal that has nothing to do with what GOP demagogues shriek about.   An op-ed in the Washington Post by dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University looks at the larger picture that the anti-Obama Republicans deliberately ignore.  Here are column excerpts:

Opponents of the nuclear agreement with Iran see it as a license for Tehran to wreak havoc in the region. Freed from economic pressure and flush with financial resources, the thinking goes, Iran can be expected to unleash its emboldened minions upon Israel and Arab states and undermine U.S. interests. However, contrary to what the critics say, the nuclear deal is far more likely to curb Iran’s regional ambition. It is rather the instability that would follow the failure of the deal that should worry them. 

Iran spent $15 billion on its military last year. By comparison, Saudi Arabia spent $80 billion, and the five other states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) spent another $35 billion. The Arab countries most worried about Iranian mischief outspent Iran by a margin of 8 to 1. Iran does not have an air force, and its ground forces and navy lag technologically behind its rivals. The nuclear deal will only widen this gap.
The deal does relieve economic pressure on Iran, but not enough to change the balance of power in the region. Secretary of State John F. Kerry has estimated that after Iran has paid its creditors, the financial windfall resulting from the deal would be no more than $50 billion to $60 billion, a good portion of which will have to go to Iran’s domestic needs.

In the past, Iran has compensated for its deficit in conventional military spending by deploying a network of armed militias trained, financed and managed by its Revolutionary Guards. . . . This end run around the regional military balance is sustainable if protected by a nuclear umbrella. As with Pakistan’s use of the same strategy against India, asymmetric provocation works only if there is deterrence against costly retaliation. Without it, Iranian provocations would invite repetitions of Israeli retaliatory operations in South Lebanon and Gaza or Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.
By signing the nuclear deal, Iran has given up that nuclear umbrella for as long as two decades and made the case for the United States to further strengthen the conventional military capacities of Israel and the GCC. Contrary to what opponents say, the nuclear agreement has weakened Iran and strengthened its regional rivals.

So why did Iran sign on to a deal that will undermine its regional strategy? The obvious answer is that economic sanctions forced Iran to choose between political stability at home and hegemony over the region. On that score, then, the nuclear deal has in one swoop ended Iran’s nuclear threat and hobbled its regional agenda.

But equally important is that Iran’s main regional worry has become the so-called Islamic State. The extremist Sunni force has emerged as an anti-Shiite and anti-Iranian juggernaut that now controls vast territory in Iraq and Syria and is a growing presence in Afghanistan.
Iran has been fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and it could be doing the same in Afghanistan before long. This could be a long war, and that reality has forced Iran to rethink its strategic calculus. Confronting the Islamic State requires not a nuclear umbrella but a reduction of tensions with the international community and greater economic resources. The threat of the Islamic State, more so than any promise of hegemony over the region, was likely a decisive factor in Iran’s decision to sign away the nuclear cover for its regional strategy.

Opponents of the nuclear deal imagine a scenario in which the deal could be scuttled, leaving Iran further isolated and under more economic sanctions and its regional capacity diminished — even as it continues to lead the fight against the Islamic State. That is unlikely. Rather, Iran could respond to the collapse of the deal by doubling down on its nuclear program while increasing regional tensions and also passing a greater burden of fighting the Islamic State to Washington and its allies.  

Torpedoing the nuclear deal would not be simply a reset to where things stood before talks started in 2013, and it would not play to the United States’ advantage. To the contrary, the United States would be confronted with the task of managing the challenge of an Iran using a newly acquired nuclear umbrella to establish its imprint on the region, while having to stop the Islamic State from establishing control over the Levant on its own. That’s what should worry the United States and its allies.  

ISIS' Attack on History Has Christian Antecedants

Ever since Barack Obama's comments at the National Pray Breakfast sent Christofascists and their political prostitutes into spittle flecked rants, the godly folk have been making claims that Christianity never caused murder and mayhem like what is seeing under ISIS and Islam.  The truth - see the prior post - is, of course, far different and Christianity has left a violent and bloody wake in its past.  A prior post describes some of the horrors wrought by the godly folk.  Now, ISIS is imitating Christianity in another way: ISIS extremists are destroy archaeological treasures and trying to rewrite history when it doesn't comport with its religious/political agenda.  A case in point is the events this week in Mosul’s museum in Iraq where priceless Assyrian statues were destroyed.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at ISIS's crimes against history and its antecedants.  Here are highlights:

It is important to recognize that while the two most recent examples emerge from a common background, the public and highly publicized destruction of long-standing symbols of earlier cultural symbols is not at all unique to modern militant Islam. When Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman empire after the conversion of the emperor Constantine, pagan temples began to be looted and destroyed. Roman emperors after him instituted strict anti-pagan laws.

In the modern period, the Soviet state, as part of its commitment to atheism, systematically destroyed Russian Orthodox churches and icons.

What all of these instances of cultural destruction have in common is the display of authority thought to be necessary upon the advent of a new regime. Reminders of past glories, pre-existing belief systems, or previous rules and rulers are often the first target of attack. They are lasting signs of the temporality of power—they serve as reminders that governments and dynasties and religions rise and fall with the course of human history. But, such destruction proclaims, this latest one will endure.

The cloak of piety conceals beneath it the universal concern for control over the narrative of history, for the power to efface the past in favor of the new present. ISIS is acting in the name of Allah, but they are in fact acting like all cultural conquerors. This is why they, like others before them, target those structures and items most treasured by the wider world.

The destruction of these priceless antiquities is a staggering loss and a true cultural tragedy. We should not, however, attribute it to militant Islam—even if the militant Islamists say so themselves. It is, sadly, a common project of totalitarian regimes from ancient times to the present: Eradicating the past to prop up the present. 

While traveling in Greece this past September we saw countless tiny churches scattered across the region.  Why? Because they were built over destroyed temples to the old gods of Greece.  Book burnings, the destruction of historic treasures all happened under Christianity even before the rise of Islam. 

"Old believers" being burned in Russia

Is America Headed for Another Iraq Disaster

The calls for the United States to send ground troops back to Iraq are growing - especially among the Republican Party.  All to combat ISIS.  As if America's last foray into Iraq ended well.  In fact, it's America's past failed policies that created the stage for ISIS' rise in the first place - something seemingly utterly lost on GOP demagogues.  What is frightening is that these war mongers in the GOP seem to be slowly getting their wish as America slides toward another Middle East disaster.  Here are highlights from a piece in Salon:

The last time the United States of America launched a ground war in Iraq, it did so only after engaging in a public debate. The debate was far from the democratic ideal; in retrospect, it was more of an ersatz form of public deliberation. But even though the lead-up to the war was truncated and riddled with scaremongering, falsehoods and conscious misrepresentation, it still happened.

Considering how most of us remember those blinkered and bloodthirsty months, it feels bizarre to write these words, but those are beginning to look like the good old days. Because what’s happening right now, out in the open and yet barely under the surface, is even worse. The signs that the United States is headed for its third invasion of Iraq in 30 years are growing. But because this new war, in marked contrast to the last one, is gestating during the tenure of a president who’d rather not fight, the public hasn’t subjected it to nearly the same degree of scrutiny.

The U.S. is slowly but surely moving closer to doing what so many of its citizens recently said it never should. It is drifting toward making yet another major military commitment to the Middle East; and it is moving toward doing so by hoping that, this time, its guns, bombs and soldiers can do what they heretofore never could.
America is sleepwalking back into a quagmire. And too many of its citizens have yet to notice.

If you listen to the rhetoric of the GOP’s presidential aspirants, you can almost hear the taboo against promoting a new war in Iraq begin to crumble. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, for example, has left the door to invasion noticeably open. He won’t rule out invading Syria, either. Walker’s chief opponent, former Gov. Jeb Bush, also won’t make any promises about putting “boots on the ground” in Syria or Iraq.

More disturbingly, the appetite for war is not only growing among always-hawkish Republicans, but also in the public at large. According to a CBS News poll released last week, a shocking 57 percent of survey respondents — which, to underline the point, is nearly six out of 10 — support sending American troops to Iraq and Syria.

[T]he error here isn’t so much the fault of the American people as it is the fault of their media and political leadership. Because the president is not advocating for a greater escalation, thus providing the political press with a recognizable pro-war figure to put in conflict with anti-war arguments; and because the media seemingly cannot resist trumpeting the latest act of barbarism from ISIS with a lurid and barely concealed excitement, the American people are unaware of the many reasons to see ISIS more realistically. 

More and more, it seems as if the country’s best hope for avoiding further entanglement is for ISIS to collapse under its own fanatical cruelty — before President Walker or President Clinton gets a chance to do it first.

Saudi Arabia Facing Growing ISIS Threat

The ruling monarchy in Saudi Arabia has long supported one of the more extreme forms of Islam - regardless of the behavior of members of the royal family outside of public view - and many Islamic fundamentalist groups have found funding in the kingdom.  Now, the support of a virulent form of Islam may be about to come back and bite the nation in the ass as ISIS militants launched an attack on the border with Iraq and statements have been released that ISIS wants to conquer the kingdom.  Karma can indeed be a bitch.  A piece in the  International Business Times looks at the story.  Here are excerpts:

For the first time since the Islamic State group formally announced its desire to conquer the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last month, government officials claimed that “terrorist elements” launched an attack on the Saudi border with Iraq. Four militants, one wearing a suicide vest, attacked a border fortification on Monday, killing three Saudi border guards.

The militants' official media wing for Iraq’s Anbar province published a photo essay taking responsibility for the attack, which is the closest ISIS has come to breaching the coveted Saudi Arabian border since it declared the exsitence of a "caliphate" in June. The suicide attack signals a change in the group’s strategy to conquer the kingdom. It was both the first direct attack on Saudi’s armed forces and the first documented attempt from the militant group to infiltrate the country. 

Despite the government's past efforts to quell extremism, Saudi has become increasing vulnerable to ISIS advances.

Saudi Arabia is an active member of the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition and a longtime U.S. ally. The kingdom is also the largest producer and exporter of oil and the region’s Sunni powerhouse, making it a triple prize for ISIS and an essential part of its plans to expand the so-called caliphate. 

Monday’s attack hit the Northern Border patrol at al-Suwaif near the city of Arar, according to The Guardian. Arar is more than 700 miles (1,200 km) from the capital Riyadh but territory between the two is not densely populated, and militants may have little opposition if they were able to cross the border and advance toward the capital through open desert.

[T]he militant group’s ideology had already succeeded in infiltrating Saudi Arabia to an extent.  Last month, ISIS claimed responsibility for killing a Danish national in the country and, in a separate incident, security forces arrested around 100 suspected ISIS militants accused of carrying out a November attack on the Saudi Shiite community in al-Ahsa. These attacks were likely carried out by ISIS sympathizers already in Saudi, who were heeding ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s call to attack Saudi citizens and "embitter their lives and make them occupied with themselves instead of us."

Whether the recent attack was a result of direct orders from Baghdadi or of a lone-wolf group of ISIS sympathizers, the threat to Saudi Arabia remains strong.

Religious extremism of all stripes remains a scourge on humanity.  A world free of religion would be a better place.

Is Obama Drinking George W. Bush's Kool-Aid?

Other than perhaps America's bungled intelligence that allowed Pearl Harbor to be attacked 73 years ago today and the Vietnam fiasco which began in earnest 50 years ago, perhaps the biggest military/foreign policy mistakes America has made during the last century is the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Anyone with any knowledge of the history of the region and not blinded by American hubris should have known from the outset that these invasions would end in disaster.  Yet, after working to get American troops out of the nightmare Bush/Cheney created, Barack Obama seems headed towards throwing away more American lives and squandering billions more of American tax dollars.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at Obama's moves to commit more American resources to this fool's errand.  Here are highlights:

No one has sounded more determined to extricate the United States from Afghanistan than President Obama. It is “time to turn the page,” he said in May when he announced plans to reduce American forces to 9,800 troops by the end of December, with a full withdrawal by the end of 2016. That goal appeared to be on track — until now. Mr. Obama’s recent turnabout and other developments seem to be sucking America back into the Afghan war, a huge mistake.

First, Mr. Obama authorized a more expansive mission for the American military in 2015 than originally planned. His order would put American troops right back into ground combat by allowing them to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militants. He had previously said that the residual force would be engaged only in counterterrorism operations aimed at remnants of Al Qaeda. The new order also permits American jets and drones to support Afghan military missions.

Already, the number of American troops to remain in Afghanistan after December has been increased by 1,000, up to 10,800. NATO allies are supposed to provide 4,000 troops next year, bringing the total of foreign forces to 12,000 to 14,000. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that any additional American troops above 9,800 are temporary and are merely covering for NATO allies that are still trying to decide how many forces to contribute.  But if NATO fails to contribute sufficient troops, then what?

Mr. Obama seems to be having second thoughts about his Afghan strategy after the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the sudden collapse of the Iraqi army. He may be trying to avoid blame if something similar happens in Afghanistan, where Taliban attacks are on the rise.

But he should resist the advice of military commanders, who are again pushing for broader involvement. They were unable to defeat the Taliban when more than 100,000 American troops were in the country; there is no reason to think that a very limited American force will be more effective now.

One lesson learned over the last 13 years is this: No amount of foreign assistance — not tens of thousands of troops, billions of dollars or unlimited amounts of military equipment — will make any real difference if the Afghans cannot or will not pull together a functioning, relatively uncorrupt and competent government, and take primary responsibility for themselves and their country.

Administration officials are still insisting “the combat mission ends” by the end of this year, but that’s simply not credible. Mr. Obama should stick to his original plan. . . .

Living in an area with a huge military presence, one thing you learn quickly is that military commanders will ALWAYS claim that with more troops and more money they can succeed no matter how much such claims are opposed to objective reality.  Anyone who believes these commanders is a fool - or drinking Bush/Cheney Kool-Aid. 

The Ancestors of ISIS and Taking the War to ISIS

A piece in the New York Times looks at ISIS in a historical context and underscores that while ISIS may be an especially virulent form of Islamic extremism, the precedents for it extend back almost 200 years.  In each of its incarnations, the Islamic state movement has been anti-western and anti-social modernity and has used Sharia law to intimidate residents and punish non-believers.  Thankfully, the past incarnations have all ultimately gone down to defeat.  Another piece in The Economist looks at the first American lead attack against ISIS in Syria.  Combined, the articles leave one wondering will history repeat itself and, if so, how long will it take to defeat ISIS and, more importantly, the mentality of those who have flocked to its banner.  Here are excerpts from the Times piece (read the whole article):

IN the last few years, there has been a dramatic rise of a seemingly new type of polity: the Islamic rebel state. Boko Haram in West Africa, the Shabab in East Africa, the Islamic Emirate in the Caucasus and, of course, the Islamic State in the Middle East, known as ISIS, or ISIL — these movements not only call for holy war against the West, but also use their resources to build theocracies.

Though in some respects unprecedented, these groups also have much in common with the Islamic revivalist movements of the 18th century, such as the Wahhabis on the Arabian Peninsula and the great jihadist states of the 19th century. They waged jihad against non-Muslim powers, and at the same time sought to radically transform their own societies.

In all of these cases, there were two distinct, though intertwined, conflicts, one against non-European empires and one against internal enemies, and both struggles were combined with state-building. This pattern is in fact not unique to the emergence of Islamic rebel states. The sociologist Charles Tilly once identified war as one of the most crucial forces in the formation of states: The foundation of a centralized government becomes necessary to organize and finance the armed forces.

At the same time, Islam was at the center of these movements. Their leaders were religious authorities, most of them assuming the title “commander of the faithful”; their states were theocratically organized. Islam helped unite fractured tribal societies and served as a source of absolute, divine authority to enhance social discipline and political order, and to legitimize war. They all preached militant Islamic revivalism, calling for the purification of their faith, while denouncing traditional Islamic society, with its more heterodox forms of Islam, as superstitious, corrupt and backward.

Today’s jihadist states share many of these features. They emerged at a time of crisis, and ruthlessly confront internal and external enemies. They oppress women. Despite the groups’ ferocity, they have all succeeded in using Islam to build broad coalitions with local tribes and communities. They provide social services and run strict Shariah courts; they use advanced propaganda methods.

If anything, they differ from the 19th-century states in that they are more radical and sophisticated. The Islamic State is perhaps the most elaborate and militant jihad polity in modern history. It uses modern state structures, including a hierarchically organized bureaucracy, a judicial system, madrasas, a vast propaganda apparatus and a financial network that allows it to sell oil on the black market. It uses violence — mass executions, kidnapping and looting, following a rationale of suppression and wealth accumulation — to an extent unknown in previous Islamic polities. And unlike its antecedents, its leaders have global aspirations, fantasizing about overrunning St. Peter’s in Rome.

And yet those differences are a matter of degree, rather than kind. Islamic rebel states are overall strikingly similar. They should be seen as one phenomenon; and this phenomenon has a history.

In this light, the international community should continue to check the expansion of groups like the Islamic State, and intervene to prevent widespread human rights abuses. But given that the United States and its allies are unlikely to commit the massive military resources necessary to defeat the Islamic State — let alone other jihadist states — the best policy might be one of containment, support of local opponents and then management of the groups’ possible collapse.

Typically, America learns nothing from history and blunders forward without understanding the more complex nature of its enemies.  The piece in The Economist looks at the first air strike foray into Syria:

THAT an American-led air strike on Islamic State (IS) targets in Syria was coming soon has not been in doubt since Barack Obama promised on September 10th that he would “degrade and ultimately destroy” the jihadist organisation that controls large swathes of northern Syria and western Iraq. The president, who will speak of the threat posed by IS at the UN General Assembly on September 24th, was clear that he would not hesitate to take the fight against IS into Syria, despite all its attendant difficulties, especially the absence of ground forces to work with. But the speed and scale of the attack that began in the early hours September 23rd still achieved a high degree of tactical surprise.

Using air and missile power to cripple IS will require a massive interdiction bombing campaign to attack its entire military structure, especially the bases from which its foreign volunteers operate. It will need precision bombing to go after its leadership, its communications network and its sources of finance. And it will require a persistent aerial threat to deny it the ability to move its forces with their heavy weapons, armour and “technicals” (pickup trucks with machine guns).

Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates joined the attack, mostly flying US-supplied F-16s, while Qatar flew planes in a support role. Fourteen strikes were carried out against a variety of targets including an IS headquarters building in Raqqa, a north-eastern Syrian city which IS controls, a finance centre, training compounds, storage facilities, supply trucks and armoured vehicles.

A second series of eight strikes, carried out by US aircraft only, targeted a hitherto obscure jihadist cell, dubbed Khorasan by American officials, at several sites near Aleppo. Among the targets were training camps, an explosives factory, a communications building and command facilities. Initial reports suggest as many as 70 of the group's fighter's many of them foreigners, were killed

What happens next will depend largely on how many targets in Syria the American-led coalition can identify. IS has had plenty of time to hide important assets in population centres, but may still have been caught on the hop. General Keane thinks that there will still be plenty to go for. A key aim of the bombing campaign is certain to be disruption of IS's oil sales, which may be earning the group as much as $2m a day. It controls six out of ten fields in eastern Syria and seven in northern Iraq (as well as two refineries).

If the aim is to degrade not just IS but several of the other jihadist organisations that have attracted money and weapons, thus creating space for what remains of the moderate opposition, it may already be too late. It will be years rather than months before the Free Syrian Army, which now very belatedly seems about to receive training and weaponry, is a fighting force capable of taking on both IS and the regime of Bashar Assad.

There's more.  Sadly, the picture is not encouraging in terms of a short term success. Besides defeating ISIS militarily, it will be important to find a way to defeat the fundamentalist mindset of those who support it and prefer to be dictated to rather than use knowledge and logic to try to better their situations.   These supporters - like Christofascists in America - are the enemies of modernity and human rights.

Is ISIS a Faith-Based Terrorist Group?

A piece at Columbia Journalism Review looks at a question that can elicit very different answers, namely, whether or not ISIS is a faith-based terrorist group.  Personally, I find myself falling on the side of those who would answer the question in the affirmative.  The rape murder and attempted genocide against those who don't hold to the extreme fundamentalist Islamic beliefs of ISIS is one strong indicator that such is the case.  And, just like far right Christians in America, the followers of ISIS claim to have god on their side even as they commit the most horrific acts.  Far right religious belief seems to always hold that those who believe differently should be stripped of their rights or, worse yet, exterminated.  Sadly, journalist remain too reluctant to call out the evils wrought by religion both in the case of ISIS and home grown Christofascists.  Like the Bible, the Koran has passages that can be used to justify any number of horrors.  The real burden rests on non-extremists of both faiths to stand up to extremists.  Unfortunately, too often they stand by quietly like the "good Germans" who allowed Hitler's rise to power.  Here are highlights from the article:

The idea that the press has not done a good job of explaining the role of religion in Islamic extremism is not by itself controversial. Murtaza Hussain, a writer at The Intercept, spoke for journalists and scholars of otherwise radically divergent worldviews when he told me, “The media doesn’t know how to cover this issue.” But ask those same journalists and scholars why, and in what ways, the media have failed to explain the role that Islamic faith plays in motivating the terrorism committed in its name, and you will get irreconcilable answers.

Some, like Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, say that a fear of being perceived as anti-Muslim inhibits journalists from linking extremism to the faith. “I believe that since 9/11 the journalism community in the West has been walking on eggshells figuring out how to cover Islam,” she says. But now, due to the heavily covered ascent of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), she thinks that “people are having to confront this 5,000-pound elephant that’s been sitting in the room—an interpretation of Islam that believes in beheadings, an Islamic state, and an end-times victory of Muslims over the world.”

Others, like Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in near Eastern and ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, contend that the media predominantly view “terrorist actions and criminal activities committed by Muslims” through the lens of the terrorists’ religious faith.

Their analysis may well be correct, but it also seems like an attempt to counter an idea that they never explicitly address: that most ISIS fighters join because they are religious zealots. The governor of an Iraqi province now mostly occupied by ISIS is quoted as saying of the Baathist officers, “All of these guys got religious after 2003.” The piece’s final line, a quote from an Iraqi researcher, states, “There is no one in Baghdadi’s state who is not a believer,” implying that adherence to the ideology of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is mainly a survival strategy.

[T]here are journalists and scholars who present compelling cases that ISIS’s actions are at least partly grounded in the teachings of Islam. In a September 1 story in The New Republic, Graeme Wood traced al-Baghdadi’s appointment of himself as caliph, as well as the group’s “taste for beheadings, stonings, crucifixions, slavery, and dhimmitude, the practice of taxing those who refuse to convert to Islam,” to its “almost pedantic adherence to its own interpretation of Islamic law.” In an interview, Wood said that while he considers the political factors behind the group’s ascent “at least as important,” it is clear that “their beliefs are central to their self-conception” and are therefore vital to grasping the differences between ISIS and other jihadist groups. He observed that journalists who do not understand the way ISIS thinks “are missing a part of the story.”

David Cook, an associate professor at Rice University who studies Islam, is more emphatic: “To say that ISIS doesn’t have anything to do with Islam is just the statement of an ignoramus or an apologist. There is support for the things that ISIS does inside the Koran. There’s support for things like beheading and different exemplary punishments that you can easily find.”

ISIS’s eagerness to advertise its scriptural credentials suggests one possible explanation for the infrequency with which journalists mention the connection: a reluctance to be seen as legitimizing terrorist propaganda. As Quartz’s Ghosh argues, “When terrorists cite the Koran or the hadith, they do so selectively, choosing only those passages that can be interpreted to suit their perverse view of the world.

The real problem is that nobody can precisely calculate the aggregation of factors that have produced the modern phenomenon of Islamic extremism. And so the claims of people who cite religious causes cannot be dismissed any more than the claims of people who cite political ones.

In judging ISIS, we also need to keep in mind that a number of :godly Christians" believe the Bible justifies murdering abortion providers - and gays.   Again, when are moderates going to stand up and stop the extremists of their own faith?