Putin v. Isis

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: Think about all the refugees. Does anyone still seriously think that attacking this man was a good idea for anyone except arms manufacturers? One of our proudest moments was FACEBOOK labeling our post on the subject at the time as “objectionable”. It isn't easy to get objectionable on Facebook.  However, we are making this available to the public on Facebook -- perhaps we will get another such honor?

Putin v. Isis

by

John Wick

It is about time to straighten a few things out, see?

Ok, now, the rumors are that Putin is going to put Russian Troops in Syria and do battle with ISIS, ISIL, DAESH, or IS, whatever your mood is at the moment. There is little point in wondering about it for these reasons, put in the form of questions:

1. Do you know of any time, ever, that Putin has simply given up on a Russian base, especially one that is Internationally recognized such as the two in Syria which are is two ports on the Mediterranean?
2. If he is going to send many Russian troops to Syria, do you think he would announce it ahead of time?
3. If he is not going to send such troops, would you expect him to say so?

Now, another thought that needs to be considered when thinking about whether such a move would be successful: think back and remember all the pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia. Once, these pirates took a Russian vessel. The Russians reacted. Since then, there has not been one single pirate attack. It may not have been a pleasant experience for the Russians immediately involved, but such attacks have ended forever.

If you still think he may not take such action, you can ask yourself if you really think that he will abandon Crimea.

Finally, the mention of this has reached the corporate media. Of course, it has been denied by our administration, but, of course, we are ever vigilant. This brings to mind that long truism that one should never believe a rumor to be true until it is officially denied. Russians are embedded with Syrian soldiers in Damascus and they will strenuously defend their two ports. That's that.

There is more, but that is enough for now. We can observe that none to the gulf Arab states are helping the refugees from Syria. Only people who speak German are.

Finally, we've re-opened the Absurd Times to the public on Facebook. Maybe they will honor us by calling it “objectionable” again.

ISIS AND PALMYRA, ETC.

THE ABSURD TIMES

More on Iraq

by

Kiev Mudyna

Illustration:  Carlos Latuff as appeared in the Middle East Monitor

As usual, Carlos says it all in a single drawing.  Here is a bit more:

Now listen here!  Idiots who talk about the Iraqi army.  Do you remember the fourth most powerful army in the world?  Well, we took care of that.  Georgie and his "BeBathification" left Iraq without any infrastructure or people who knew what they were doing.  What we left there is what we put there.  So shut up already?

For those of you who have remembered the "servants" of our country:  Instead of throwing murdered flowers on the dirt where the dead ones are buried, why not carry out your pre-announced responsibility to take care of them once they leave the "service"?  If you are thinking of signing up, well, you have never been a reader of this publication and probably never will again.  Just remember what happens to you once you are not longer considered "Government Property".

Those we threw out were expert military leaders.  They buried their uniforms in the desert and then dug them up once Daesh or ISIS, OR ISIL, OR IS, or religious maniacs started advancing.  They are the reason they were so successful at first.  Now they have had it with the nuts and more or less quit the whole nonsense.

We have heard a lot of blundering attempts to answer the question asked of Republican candidates: "If you knew then, what we know now, would you still have invaded Iraq?"  They can't answer it.  A better question would be "IF YOU KNEW THEN WHAT READERS OF THE ABSURD TIMES KNEW THEN WOULD YOU STILL HAVE INVADED?"  Or "if you knew now what Bush and Cheney knew then, would you still have invaded?" 

They wonder why there is such a low turnout for elections here.

Well, here is an interview on Palmyra:

THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2015

Expanding Foothold, Islamic State Captures Syria’s Ancient Palmyra After Fall of Iraq’s Ramadi

The self-described Islamic State has seized control of the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria. Palmyra is home to some of the world’s most renowned historic structures and is classified as a World Heritage Site. There are fears it could see the same fate as other cities where ISIL has destroyed ancient cultural sites and artifacts. With Palmyra’s capture, ISIL now reportedly controls more than half of Syrian territory. The seizing of Palmyra in Syria comes as the U.S. has launched airstrikes and expedited weapons shipments for the campaign to dislodge ISIL from the Iraqi city of Ramadi. ISIL seized Ramadi on Sunday, leaving hundreds dead and forcing thousands to flee. Iranian-backed Shiite militias are staging a counteroffensive to retake the city. We are joined by Charles Glass, former ABC News chief Middle East correspondent and author of "Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring."

Image Credit: Reuters

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Fighters from the self-described Islamic State now control more than half of Syria, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The announcement was made after the Islamic State seized control of both the ancient and modern cities of Palmyra in central Syria. Palmyra is home to some of the world’s most renowned historic sites, including the Temple of Ba’al, an ancient theater and a 2,000-year-old colonnade. The fall of Palmyra comes just days after fighters from the Islamic State seized control of the Iraqi city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad. The Islamic State attacked the city by sending in a wave of 30 suicide car bombs. Ten of the vehicles were packed with enough bomb-making materials to carry out explosions the size of the blast of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

AMY GOODMAN: Iranian-backed Shiite militias are now staging a counteroffensive to retake Ramadi. The United States has begun carrying out aerial bombings to support the effort. Former State Department official Ramzy Mardini told the Military Times, quote, "The U.S. has effectively changed its position, coming to the realization that Shiite militias are a necessary evil in the fight against ISIS." The United States has also expedited shipment of 1,000 additional AT4 anti-tank weapons for Iraqi forces.

Joining us now is Charles Glass, former ABC News chief Middle East correspondent. His latest book is titled Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring.

Charles, first address this latest news that the self-proclaimed Islamic State has moved from Ramadi and has now taken over the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria, and that ISIS now controls more than half of Syria.

CHARLES GLASS: Well, it hasn’t moved from Ramadi. The Islamic State is fighting a two-front war, one in the east against the Iraqi army and the peshmerga of the Kurdish Regional Government, and then in the west against the Syrian army. They have substantial forces on both sides so that they’re able to attack in both places and, as now we’ve seen with Palmyra and Ramadi falling, successfully to fight this two-front war. The fact that they can do this means that they’re—they have not given up, they have not retreated. There were hopes in Iraq that there would be an attempt to retake Mosul—obviously, that is going to wait—while Baghdad itself is protected, because Ramadi is so close to Baghdad. And in Syria, taking Palmyra or the town of Tadmur next to Palmyra, where there was a notorious prison where there were many Islamist prisoners, is a major coup for them. But when we say that half of Syria is now under ISIS control, what that means is that half the territories, but three-quarters of the population is still under government control.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Charlie Glass, could you talk about the significance of Palmyra? I mean, not only is it the site of these ancient ruins, but it is also close to the oil and gas fields, which the Syrian government uses to generate electricity for a part of the country.

CHARLES GLASS: Well, ISIS had already last year taken oil and gas fields near Raqqa, which is its—the capital of the Islamic caliphate. So this is simply expanding their access to more crude oil, which they are selling extremely cheaply on the world market through Turkey.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And do you think—there’s been some concern expressed thatISIS will gain revenue, possibly, from the illegal trafficking of the antiquities that are there in Palmyra?

CHARLES GLASS: Well, ISIS and the other extreme Islamic group, the Nusra Front, have been selling antiquities from northern Syria for the past couple of years. It’s nothing new. Traders are coming down from Turkey to buy the most valuable artifacts and then sell them in Turkey and in Europe. This will simply increase the plunder. So what they don’t sell, they will destroy, saying that they’re destroying idols. And they particularly would like to destroy pre-Islamic Roman structures that are in Palmyra. Palmyra is in the middle of the desert; it’s not really easily accessible from anywhere. But it is a most beautiful ancient city, which, if they behave the way they behaved in ancient cities in Iraq, won’t be there anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: The Syrian antiquities chief said hundreds of statues had been moved from the historic, ancient city of Palmyra to locations safe from Islamic State militants, who managed to take control of areas today. He called on the international community to help protect the ancient site.

MAAMOUN ABDULKARIM: [translated] It is an international battle. If IS succeeds, it will not be a victory against only the Syrian people, but one against America, China, France, Britain and Russia and all the permanent members in the Security Council, as well as the international community. They must at least prevent the advance of any reinforcement to the groups that have already crept into the city.

AMY GOODMAN: The city is called Palmyra, or Palmyra, by some. But talk about what this means even beyond Palmyra in Syria. You wrote a book on this, Charles Glass, that’s just been published, Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring.

CHARLES GLASS: The military conflict between the Syrian government and its Islamist opponents, this is part of the seesaw that’s been going on since the war began. The regime makes gains in certain areas, and the Islamists retreat, then the Islamists make gains. And this is a measure of the inability of either side to defeat the other. So, the fall of Palmyra militarily doesn’t mean very much. From there, there aren’t many places to strike out. However, psychologically, it means a lot because it’s an important part of Syrian and human civilization. But militarily, the struggle will go on. This war could go on for years as each side takes and loses territory, conquers and loses control of populations, and drives—and particularly with the Islamists, drives populations out of their homes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what do you say, Charlie Glass, to the fact that the antiquities chief also asked for more international help to help protect Palmyra? Do you feel that there should be a more robust international military intervention now to prevent the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s military successes?

CHARLES GLASS: I’m not sure what the antiquities chief in Syria meant when he said that there should be intervention, if he means military intervention or if he means UNESCO should act to rescue those—the things that can be moved and taken to a safe place, in safer parts of Syria or outside Syria, until the war is over. I’m not sure. It would be, I think, very demoralizing for Syrian people to see an international military intervention to protect ruins, but not to protect the 50,000 people who live around those ruins in the city of Tadmur. It would be saying—it would be a way of saying to the Syrian people, "Your lives are not important, but these stones are." And that would probably reinforce the Islamic Front’s propaganda that the world doesn’t really care about you, but we do.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Charles Glass, talk about what is happening now in Syria. What is happening with Assad, who is still the ruler? What are the different alliances that are forming, and then the role of the West, like the United States?

CHARLES GLASS: Well, the alliances in Syria haven’t changed much. I mean, the Iranians and the Russians still back the Assad regime, and the United States, indirectly, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are supporting the opposition. The United States says it’s supporting a mythical moderate, non-Islamist opposition. But the weapons that it gives to those people end up in the hands of ISISor the Nusra Front, anyway, as soon as they cross the border. The balance of forces, in that sense, have not changed for the last two years.

I think that one of the problems that the United States has is it has two different policies in this war. It is confronting actively IS in Iraq, because the United States supports the regime in Baghdad, but is allowing its client states—Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar—to support that same IS against a regime in Damascus that it doesn’t like because of its alliance with Iran and Russia.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the role of Saudi Arabia here?

CHARLES GLASS: Saudi Arabia’s role has been consistent from the beginning. It wanted to see Assad thrown out, and it would—it was giving funding and arms to anyone who would do that. And because of its own particular Wahhabist ideological bent, it gave the bulk of those supplies to people like that. And those were the people who formed the major—the two major Islamist groups in Syria, the Islamic State and the Nusra Front.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: But what do you think accounts for the fact that U.S. policy is different in Iraq than it is from Syria?

CHARLES GLASS: As I said, they want the regime in Damascus to fall because of its relationship with Iran, its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and its alliance with Russia. They want that regime to go. In Baghdad, they want the regime, since they set it up after the invasion of 2003—they want that regime to stay. But the problem is, these two regimes, in Baghdad and Damascus, are the forces opposed to the Islamic Front, and it’s the Islamic Front that wants to overthrow both of them. So, until there’s a coordination of forces—the Syrian army in the west, the Iraqi army and the Kurds in east—to have a coherent strategy to squeeze the Islamists in the middle, the war will go on and on.

AMY GOODMAN: The significance of the U.S. announcing that special forces had conducted a rare raid against a senior Islamic State figure at his residence in Omar, in Syria’s oil-rich southeast, commandos killing Abu Sayyaf, a Tunisian jihadi described as a manager of the Islamic State’s oil and gas operations, which has been a significant source of income for the organization?

CHARLES GLASS: Well, I’m not sure what your question is. I don’t—you just—

AMY GOODMAN: The significance of them killing him in this rare raid on his home?

CHARLES GLASS: Well, if it’s true, then it’s an attempt to cut off some of their supply of money, because they’re using that to fight the Iraqi army and have successes like the one they’ve just had in Ramadi, if—that’s if it’s true. I mean, a lot of these reports that come out, they’re impossible to verify, because there’s only one source for that—for that story.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I also wanted to ask about Iraq. On Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Jeff Rathke acknowledged the loss of Ramadi was a setback, but pledged continued U.S. support.

JEFF RATHKE: We’ve always known that the fight would be long and difficult, especially in Anbar province. And so there’s no denying that this is a setback, but there’s also no denying that the United States will help the Iraqis take back Ramadi. As of today, we are supporting the Iraqi security forces and the government of Iraq with precision airstrikes and advice to the Iraqi forces. Our aircraft are in the air searching forISIL targets, and they will continue to do so until Ramadi is retaken

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The fall of Ramadi came despite weeks of U.S. airstrikes and is considered one of ISIL’s biggest victories since it seized territory across Iraq last June. Speaking Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said he expects the Islamic State’s gains to be reversed.

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: In addition, their communications have been reduced, their funding and financial mechanisms have been reduced, and their movements, by and large, in—most certainly where there are air patrols and other capacities, have been reduced. But that’s not everywhere. And so, it is possible to have the kind of attack we’ve seen in Ramadi. But I am absolutely confident, in the days ahead, that will be reversed.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Charlie Glass, that was John Kerry speaking on Tuesday. So could you talk about this question of whether the U.S. should now engage—I mean, even the Iraqi government has said that they need more military assistance to be able to fight the Islamic State. And because, as you pointed out, the U.S. is supporting the Iraqi government, whereas of course it’s not doing so with the Assad regime in Syria, do you think that the U.S. should now consider perhaps troops in Iraq?

CHARLES GLASS: It seems to me obvious that the first measure should be to deprive the Islamic State of its arms and money from—coming through Turkey. Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States. It can close that border. It has not closed that border. The United States has not forced it to close that border. Until that border is closed, it has free and easy access to supplies and to funding and to places for its fighters to receive medical treatment and to get rest when they need it. Without that, they’re going to find themselves surrounded by the Syrian army, the Iraqi army and the Kurds, with no lines for outside—no lines of communication for outside support. I would think that if the United States wants to stay out of another war in the Middle East, which I think most of the public does want, that the correct strategy would be to cut off the supplies and the funding through Turkey.

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Glass, you’re in France, and on June 2nd, ministers from members of the coalition fighting the Islamic State will meet in Paris to devise strategies to reverse recent losses. What do you think needs to happen, as we look from Iraq to Syria?

CHARLES GLASS: Well, first, as I said, to cut—to close the border. Second, there has to be coordination among the Syrians, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Americans, who are all actively involved in opposing the Islamic State. Without that kind of coordination, it’s not going to work, because the—as we see, that the Islamic State can effectively pick which side it’s going to fight at which time and then go after the other side when it suits it. At the moment, it’s setting the agenda. I think that this coordination is vital. I think also it’s vital to bring an end to the war in Syria through discussions between the United States and the Russians. So, the United States supporting the opposition, the Russians supporting the regime, if they can come to an agreement between themselves, that would be a huge step forward, that they want—if they do indeed want to bring peace to Syria rather than simply force their own agenda at the expense of the Syrian people.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Charlie Glass, you mentioned the question of funding and cutting off funding and closing the border. In your book, you conclude your book,Syria Burning, by citing an Arab diplomat in Damascus who said about support for the Islamic State, "It’s like the lion tamer. He feeds and trains the lion, but the lion might kill him at the right moment." So, given this concern, is it your view that countries like Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc., have now relinquished funding, military and financial, to the Islamic State?

CHARLES GLASS: No, clearly, they haven’t stopped funding and supplying them. The Turks are still allowing fighters to go through their border and to take part in fighting in Syria and Iraq. No, that simply hasn’t happened. It probably should happen. I think one of the fears that all of the backers of these two big Islamic groups have is that if the fighting in Syria stops, that they’ll come home and make problems for them at home. In a way, the Saudis, by encouraging these people to fight in Syria against what they see as an idolatrous, Alawite, non-Muslim regime is a way of making sure they don’t come back and make problems in Saudi Arabia itself. And the Turks also would be very worried if some of these fighters decide to go after Turkey and try to set up an Islamic State in Turkey, or indeed any of the countries that have supported IS.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to finally turn to the comments made by former Florida governor, Republican presidential hopeful and first brother Jeb Bush. Speaking Wednesday, he suggested the Obama administration’s policies led to the creation of the Islamic State.

JEB BUSH: ISIS didn’t exist when my brother was president. Al-Qaeda in Iraq was wiped out when my brother was president. There were mistakes made in Iraq, for sure, but the surge created a fragile, but stable, Iraq that the president could have built on, and it would have not allowed a ISIS, or ISIL.

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Glass, your final comment to Jeb Bush?

CHARLES GLASS: Well, he is right that President Obama did allow the Islamic Front to be created during his term of office, but he’s also minimizing the role that al-Qaeda in Iraq played in being the nucleus of IS and of the Nusra Front, both. While they did go underground during the surge, they didn’t disappear. And by the way, they did not exist before the American invasion under Bush’s brother took place in 2003. They didn’t exist at all. They are a function of that invasion.

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Glass, we want to thank you for being with us, formerABC News chief Middle East correspondent. His latest book is titled Syria Burning:ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring.

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God, Isis, Politics, Goodbye

THE ABSURD TIMES

Above: this is what we have declined to.

            Zarathustra stood amongst his animals, his eagle on one wrist and the falcon on the other.  He leaned forward on his walking stick, glanced at the sun, and then to his animals.

            "Ye all are with me as I glanced at the sun, and what would the sun be without those form whom it shines?  Yet I am weary of man and how he has gone under and kept sinking.

            "Yea verilly, I thinketh that man has sunk to his greatest depth and shall never rise up."

            With that, Zarathustra grew melancholy.  He gazed about and saw his friend and said "Thou shalt go down to man and tell him how deep he has sunk.  Let him know I am no longer with him, but thou, thou shalt return after this last trek and tell me what transpired.  Let not man depress thee, but have fun in telling him the most recent of the truths.  The tell him that Zarathustra seeks a new breed and future and bid him farewell."

            His friend replied "I've quit these morons, you know that."

            And Zarathustra replied with a heavy heart "Yea, I knowest that, but thou owest me this one last favor.  After that, we shall stay on this mountain and roam as we wish"

            And his friend replied, "Ok, ok, but I'll be damned if I'm going to use that Renaissance English you use."

            And Zarathustra replied "It be a common error, verily Common, but speakest thou as thou wilt"

           

Also Sprach Zarathustra

           

________________________

            So, here I am to clue you in.  I wanted to take a break from all this nonsense, but once more around the rosie.

            Let's start out with an old simple issue, marriage.  An English poet once wrote the only two lines of his worth remembering.  It consists of a preface of a prospective wife named Margaret who said "I will not marry you unless you stop smoking your cigars."  At that point, Kipling wrote:

"A million Maggies are willing to bear the yoke,

And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke."

_____________________________

Ok, that's not what I'm talking about here either.  First, let's get it clear that God is dead and Zarathustra said "Where you can not help, there you must walk by."  So I don't expect to do either until I'm finished with this. 

We can start with ISIS which is only the latest example of what a belief in a God can do if carried on to its logical conclusion.  Religion is used as a cover for the lust for power and money.  The last example, before ISIS was the Spanish Inquisition.  Salem wasn't a thrill either.

ISIS, to give Islam its due, is not even a corruption of Islam.  Indeed, instead of calling it Deash, which is a step in the right direction, the term "Hawarji" best applies to them, something that approximates what Christians think of as "Apostates".  If Islam had a Pope, he would excommunicate them all, but there is no centralized authority like that in Islam, only those who claim it.

Cockburn, of the Independent  points out that every time ISIS suffers a setback, it comes up with a new atrocity.  So, beheading doesn't seem to have the effect that burning people alive does.  Thus, the Guillotine is replaced by knives and people are burned alive in caged rather than on posts as in the cases of Joan of Arc and Savronolla. 

People wonder why, if ISIS is do committed to eliminate "Zionism," it doesn't attack Israel rather than "other" Moslems.  Well, Netanyahu of Israel claims that it is only his presence that prevents them from coming.  If he looses the election, ISIS will come.  Actually, Daesh is too busy purifying Islam.  Furthermore, is there any doubt that ISIS would have been stopped had Saddam Hussein remained leader of Iraq?  Would Iran be the only force capable of stopping them, and willing to?  Is there any doubt that the US created it in order to cause problems for Assad in Syria?  That things would be far better in Libya had Gaddafi remained in power?  Bush, Bush, Obama, Clinton, the axis of medieval (with apologists to those who actually know the middle-ages).

This is what Republicans are trying to do with a recent letter to Iran, saying the treaty will not last.  Exactly what the more ISIS-like Shia clerics in Iran are saying.  The two groups are well-suited for one another. 

The latest series of atrocities has to do with destroying ancient ruins of 3,000 year old cities and remnants of their civilization, again in the name of Islam.  Daesh overlooks the fact that we did the same in Iraq with Bush I and people here were unfazed.  See, for Americans, nothing is more sacred than a 1959 Edsel, real history, not some old statue. 

When the Taliban destroyed a statue of an ancient Buddha, despite the outcry here, the Dali Lama said, while giggling, "They will loose some tourist trade," or something like that. 

Anyway, must of the above is documented in the interviews below.  There is so much material there that I don't expect anyone to get through it all, but it should be in one place, I thought.

I will be sending them all together in the next issue, just to keep things is some sort of order.

Anyway, I'm outta here.  I've told you all of this crap before and it hasn't made one bit of a difference.  I don't expect it to now, so farewell! 

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ISIS, OBAMA, SYRIA, PUTIN

THE ABSURD TIMES

            Shall we say "Here we go again?" after the 9/11 festivities, or memorials are over.  We can all lament the two of three thousand innocent people who died in the towers that day, but not the same number of innocent people who died in Gaza?  But now we have a "terrorist" threat in Iraq to take care of.

            It may be difficult to grasp, but what happened as a result of 9/11?  Many think that the entire thing was staged to make way for what followed, but it is just as likely that Bush and Cheney gave thanks that it happened.  At the time, Bush was seen reading a story about a goat, or duck, at the time.  When the fact was whispered in his ear, he waited for the longest time, perhaps because he wanted instead to find out what happened to the duck first, then get on an airplane.  Well, it's as good an explanation as anyone else has given, right?

            Because of the deaths in the twin towers, the crash into the Pentagon, and a crash in Pennsylvania, we quite logically invaded Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and occupied both countries for ten years and spent at least three trillion dollars, and sent many soldiers and civilians to their deaths.  To celebrate our success at reforming the world, Obama announced an additional war on the eve of 9/11. 

            There has been a lot of talk about boot on the ground.  We have no boots of the ground in Iraq.  We do have about 2,000 soldiers there, presumably they walk, and they wear boots, but they are not boots on the ground.  We are assured that boots on the ground are off the table.  You should always keep your boots off the table, don't you know.

            This time, we will get involved in Syria.  In Lebanon there was a civil war that went on for 15 years at least and it was only stopped by the intervention and mediation of Syria.  Now the civil war is in Syria.  There is no way that can turn out well with us involved.  It is less likely to result in good results than the NFL investigation into domestic violence cases.

            Actually, the US should be considered the Rodney Dangerfield of International Relations.  We unified Vietnam, and nobody said thank you.  We saved Afghanistan from the Taliban and now things are great there and women have the vote.  We liberated Iraq from the evil Saddam Hussein, and everything is peaceful.  We liberated Libya from Gaddafi, and they recently held a Militian Pool Party in the American Embassy.  Of course, we had left, but still, things are nice there now and they love us.  Last year they even celebrated 9/11 in Benghazi. 

            Now, of course, we have to liberate Syria from Assad.  So, we are going to arm what we called "doctors, lawyers, and radio journalists" and let them fight ISIL.  Yeah, they will be the boots.  Of course, Assad says this will violate international law and Putin agrees with him, but hey, Putin is just jealous and testing nuclear missiles, just in case NATO attacks from Poland.

            Anyway, here are a couple scholars to talk about the subject without all the idiocy of our major networks:

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

Obama Vows to Destroy Islamic State, But Expanded Strikes in Syria & Iraq Point to "Endless War"

President Obama has authorized U.S. airstrikes for the first time in Syria and their expansion in Iraq against the militant group Islamic State. In a prime-time address, Obama vowed to hunt down Islamic State militants "wherever they are." Obama also announced he is sending 475 more U.S. military troops to Iraq, bringing the total to 1,600. He also called for congressional support to arm and train the Syrian opposition. We get analysis of Obama’s speech and this latest U.S. military foray into the Middle East with two guests: Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia who has worked on issues involving Iraq since the 1980s and a former adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government; and Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College and author of several books. Prashad’s latest article is "What President Obama Should Not Do About ISIS."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In a prime-time televised address last night, President Barack Obama announced he had authorized U.S. airstrikes for the first time in Syria and their expansion in Iraq against the Islamic State, which has seized broad stretches of Iraq and Syria. He vowed to hunt down militants from the Islamic State, quote, "wherever they are." Obama also announced he is sending 475 more U.S. military troops to Iraq, bringing the total to 1,600. He also called for congressional support to arm and train the Syrian opposition. Obama’s speech came on the eve of the 13th anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: So tonight, with a new Iraqi government in place and following consultations with allies abroad and Congress at home, I can announce that America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat. Our objective is clear: We will degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL through comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy.

First, we will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these terrorists. Working with the Iraqi government, we will expand our efforts beyond protecting our own people and humanitarian missions, so that we’re hitting ISIL targets as Iraqi forces go on offense. Moreover, I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are. That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.

Second, we will increase our support to forces fighting these terrorists on the ground. In June, I deployed several hundred American servicemembers to Iraq to assess how we can best support Iraqi security forces. Now that those teams have completed their work, and Iraq has formed a government, we will send an additional 475 servicemembers to Iraq. As I’ve said before, these American forces will not have a combat mission. We will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq. But they are needed to support Iraqi and Kurdish forces with training, intelligence and equipment. We’ll also support Iraq’s efforts to stand up National Guard units to help Sunni communities secure their own freedom from ISIL’s control.

Across the border in Syria, we have ramped up our military assistance to the Syrian opposition. Tonight I call on Congress again to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters. In the fight against ISIL, we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its own people, a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost. Instead, we must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL, while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria’s crisis once and for all.

Third, we will continue to draw on our substantial counterterrorism capabilities to prevent ISIL attacks. Working with our partners, we will redouble our efforts to cut off its funding, improve our intelligence, strengthen our defenses, counter its warped ideology, and stem the flow of foreign fighters into and out of the Middle East. And in two weeks, I will chair a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to further mobilize the international community around this effort.

Fourth, we will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians who have been displaced by this terrorist organization. This includes Sunni and Shia Muslims who are at grave risk, as well as tens of thousands of Christians and other religious minorities. We cannot allow these communities to be driven from their ancient homelands.

So this is our strategy. And in each of these four parts of our strategy, America will be joined by a broad coalition of partners.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about President Obama’s speech, we’re joined by two guests. Peter Galbraith is former U.S. ambassador to Croatia. He’s worked on issues involving Iraq since the 1980s and is a former adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government. He testified before a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, currently a senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. His books include The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End. He joins us from Washington, D.C.

In Chicopee, Massachusetts, we’re joined by Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College, author of several books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter and, most recently, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Vijay Prashad is also a columnist for Frontline, where he’s been writing extensively about the Islamic State, his latest piece headlined "What President Obama Should Not Do About ISIS."

Ambassador Galbraith, let’s begin with you. Your response to President Obama’s speech last night?

PETER GALBRAITH: He outlined a strategy, and I think the strategy has a good prospect of accomplishing the goal of degrading ISIS. But I don’t think it’s capable of destroying ISIS. So let’s look at the parts of it. Airstrikes are effective when there are forces on the ground. And that really is the dilemma. Inside Iraq and Syria, there are three main forces that you could be supporting. There’s the Kurdistan Peshmerga, which suffered setbacks in August, but the units remained intact. With air support, they’ve been able to retake territory. But they are not going to go significantly beyond Kurdistan, and they’ve more or less retaken that territory. In the rest of Iraq, there’s the Iraqi army, which has largely disappeared since the beginning of the year. We spent billions building it up, and the end result was that the weapons we provided ended up in ISIS’s hands. I don’t see how you reconstitute that. The president’s talking about supporting local forces, and that, in theory, could be effective in the Sunni areas, but it’s going to be hard to get them set up, given that ISIS is there, and also that they would have to work with a government that Sunnis absolutely don’t trust. They don’t see a big difference between al-Abadi and his predecessor, Maliki. So, and in Syria, the problem with supporting the Syrian opposition is that we don’t really have a good feel for who all these people are, and they really have no prospect of defeating Assad, and we don’t really know if we can rely on them to fight ISIS, with the exception of, again, in the Kurdish north, the YPG, the Syrian Kurdish military. They have been fighting ISIS for well more than a year and at least have been holding their own.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Vijay Prashad, I wanted to ask you your reaction to the president’s speech and his new policy, and also this whole idea of asking Congress to finance the retraining once again, a creation of a new Iraqi army, after the last one that the United States spent billions on training has basically disintegrated.

VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, I found the speech interesting, because the details on Iraq were definitely much more significant than the details on Syria. It was very light on Syria, for a good reason. At least in Iraq, as Ambassador Galbraith said, there is the possibility of providing close air support to the Kurdish Peshmerga from Iraqi Kurdistan. There’s a possibility of providing close air support through whatever remains of the Iraqi army. After all, they did take back the town of Amerli. But in Syria, there is no real easy group to which the United States can give close air support.

You know, the YPG—that is to say, the Kurdish force in the northeast of Syria—is backed by the Kurdish Workers’ Party from Turkey. The United States sees them as a terrorist organization. So I doubt very much that they will overtly have any coordination with the YPG and the PKK. They’ve already said they will not coordinate with the Syrian government. That’s the second force that could be mobilized to attack the ISIS fighters, particularly as ISIS is moving beyond Raqqa toward the homeland of the Kurdish government. The third major force is the other Islamist opposition. And it’s important to point out here that just a few days ago there was an enormous bomb attack on one of the most, you know, fierce fighting units among the other Islamists, and that was Ahrar al-Sham’s, which lost basically its entire leadership. The Free Syrian Army is basically a shell of what it had been. It’s more in name only.

So the idea that the United States is now going to outsource the training of a moderate Syrian opposition fighting force to Saudi Arabia has created, I think, a lot of worry in the region, a lot of concern, because Saudi Arabia’s own cutout in the Syrian war has been Jaysh al-Islam, which is not known for its moderation in any way. So the United States, if it wants to provide close air support to take on the Islamic State inside Syria, has no effective partner. So, in that sense, Mr. Obama’s speech yesterday was very confusing and was much more rhetoric than actual strategy.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, then come back to this debate. We’re joined by Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College, also by Ambassador Peter Galbraith. Stay with us.

[break]

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We continue to look at President Obama’s speech last night authorizing airstrikes in Syria and expanding attacks in Iraq against the Islamic State.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partners’ forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years. And it is consistent with the approach I outlined earlier this year: to use force against anyone who threatens America’s core interests, but to mobilize partners wherever possible to address broader challenges to international order.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the speech, again, we’re joined by two guests, Ambassador Peter Galbraith, former adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government, and Trinity College professor Vijay Prashad. Vijay Prashad, do you think the U.S. should be bombing at all?

VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, you know, there’s a big difference between bombing from the sky to, you know, destroy the advance of something like the Islamic State, and to give close air support. And I think that this is the confusion, is what exactly is the United States prepared to do? Is it prepared to wipe out the city of Raqqa? Or does it want to give close air support to people on the ground who are fighting directly and engaging with the group, the Islamic State? In Syria, as far as I can see in, unless there is a serious political discussion between all the parties, there is no way that you can reconstitute a significant enough fighting force that will be able to take on the Islamic State. It seems that the United States wants to have it both ways: on the one side, take on the Islamic State, and on the other side, continue with promoting chaos inside Syria. You cannot promote chaos and take on the Islamic State. You have to pick one particular strategy, and Mr. Obama actually has chosen both. Bombing is not a panacea, unless there’s a real strategy of how you’re going to defeat the Islamic State on the ground.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ambassador Galbraith, what about this issue of the president saying that he believes he has the authorization to be able to carry out these actions and says he would welcome a vote by Congress but doesn’t feel he needs it? I’d like to ask you about that specifically in relationship to Syria itself.

PETER GALBRAITH: I spent 14 years working for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, from '79 to ’93, and repeatedly the issue of the War Powers Act came up. It was enacted to prevent another Vietnam, but the kind of conflicts that we've had since then have been much smaller scale. The Congress is not serious about having a role in making decisions about these kinds of interventions. And presidents, when they really want to do it, are not interested in getting congressional support. So I think this is really an academic debate that is not of much interest to the American people, not to the foreign policy community. Frankly, it’s a sideshow.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you agree with that, Professor Prashad?

VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, you know, I don’t have the kind of experience in Washington, D.C., but I do think that a lot of what happens in American foreign policy making, or has happened in the last few years, is much more for domestic consumption than it is actually about the problems around the world. If you just take the examples that Mr. Obama said yesterday of successes, you know, he mentioned Yemen and Somalia. Well, that’s news to the people of Somalia and Yemen that the American strategy has been a success. Indeed, Yemen, principally because it’s out of the American news, appears to be a quiet place, but it’s definitely not a quiet place for the people of Yemen. In fact, the problems in Yemen have since compounded. And even in Somalia, where the leader of al-Shabab was assassinated recently, there was a bomb blast. And, you know, I don’t know, they counted about 20 people dead. So it’s not clear that—when foreign policy decision making is made in the public domain in the United States, it’s not clear that that’s directly in the interests of people overseas or whether it’s for domestic consumption. And it seems to me this is much more for domestic consumption than it is for the actual pragmatic problems for people in that region.

AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador Prashad [sic], the issue of Saudi Arabia, I believe—rather, Ambassador Galbraith, Saudi Arabia, I think Secretary of State Kerry is there today. Saudi Arabia as a funder of the Islamic State and the U.S. role as an ally with Saudi Arabia, do you think it is putting the proper pressure it should, whether we’re talking about Saudi Arabia, whether we’re talking about Qatar, whether we’re talking about Jordan?

PETER GALBRAITH: Well, the first point is that these countries don’t see the situation as we do. As far as they’re concerned, the top threat is Iran, and then probably the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Islamic State would be in third place. So, to the extent that the Islamic State is useful in fighting the Iranian-backed regime in Iraq and in Syria, they are much more ambivalent. And that raises a question about a strategy of having the Saudis involved in training the so-called moderate Islamic opposition. And there’s always a question about whether the Saudis are moderate in this matter.

But the other problem in Syria, which I think people don’t focus on, is some 35 percent of the Syrian population is not Sunni Arab. That is to say, they are Alawites, Christian, Druze, other religious minorities and Kurds. And the striking thing about this opposition is that it doesn’t include significant support from any of those communities. The Alawites fear, with very good reason, that if the opposition were to prevail, even the moderates, that they would face genocide. So even if they don’t like Assad, he’s an Alawite, and at least he’s there and capable of preventing genocide.

Now, the one thing that I think was—one of the things that I think was good in the president’s speech, which hasn’t been remarked on, is he made a distinction between trying to eliminate ISIS and having a political settlement in Syria. And I think there’s no prospect that the Syrian war can be resolved militarily. I think it’s going to be very difficult to do it politically. But at least there’s a recognition in his speech that as far as the Assad regime goes, we’re not looking at a military defeat, we’re looking at a political settlement. And I think that’s right.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Vijay Prashad, what would you see as the solution to the continuing crisis in Iraq and Syria? And how does the United States counter this view in the Arab and Muslim world that it’s going from one country to another seeking to impose its solutions on the local domestic conflicts?

VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, Juan, I’ll put it in two different ways. I was actually struck by President Obama’s use of words like "Shia" and "Sunni," very loosely used, and I don’t think this is helpful. I think the most important direction is to create a rapprochement, for the United States to work towards creating a de-escalation and rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Unless the United States is able to bring these two countries or at least help bring these two countries to the table, there is going to be continued chaos in the region. And in fact, there has been an opportunity to bring them together, and that was the ill-starred Syria contact group which was formed by Egypt in 2012, which had the most important countries in the region sit around the table, and that was Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Egypt. I think something like that needs to be reconstituted. I utterly agree with Ambassador Galbraith that from the standpoint of Riyadh, they still see Iran as the principal threat. And if this continues to happen, well, God help the Middle East, because the most important thing is to de-escalate the tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It is what is principally going to be an impediment to any—let’s not say "peace," but any de-escalation of the immense violence that has inflicted Syria and Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Professor Prashad, the same question to you about the role of Saudi Arabia in all of this?

VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, I mean, it’s a curious business. Again, like Ambassador Galbraith, I agree. It’s a serious question whether Saudi Arabia has moderate goals in the region. I mean, the fact is that their cutout in Syria, which is Jaysh al-Islam, was not at all considered a moderate group. I mean, people have worried about the people that Saudi officially has been financing. Forget the private financing from Saudi, Qatari and Kuwaiti sheikhs; the official organization itself is not moderate. So how does that give people confidence that the new force that will be constituted, you know, after the Islamic Front, the Southern Front, and this will be the third attempt—how are we confident that this is going to be moderate? I think, you know, this is really hoping against hope for some kind of development which there is no evidence to indicate can happen—in other words, the making of a moderate military force through the good auspices of Saudi Arabia.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ambassador Galbraith, I’d like to ask you about Iraq specifically. You’ve argued in some of your writings that the national project of Iraq is essentially a failed project and that, especially in terms of the Kurds, greater independence would probably be a better route. How do you see what is going to be happening in Iraq, even assuming the United States is able to prevail against the Islamic State with the support of the local Iraqi and Syrian militias or fighters?

PETER GALBRAITH: Well, Iraq had broke apart a long time ago. Kurdistan in the north is, in all regards, an independent state with its own parliament, army. We’re now supplying it directly. We speak of it, you know, as if it were also an independent state. And there’s no way that it’s going to go back to be just a region of Iraq. The president of Kurdistan said he’s going to have a referendum on independence. I think that’s probably been put off for a while. But the operative thing is "put off for a while."

And with regard to Sunnis and Shiites, the problem is that the Sunnis ran Iraq for its first 90 years and their policy was to keep the Kurds in and the Shiites down. Since 2003, the Shiites, who are the majority, have been in charge. It has been a—the last three prime ministers have come Dawa, a Shiite religious party. They seek to define Iraq as a Shiite state with close ties with Iran. That’s unacceptable to the Sunnis. And there’s no way that Sunnis are going to turn against ISIS and work with a government that they see doesn’t really include them, and indeed is hostile to them.

And the president made a lot in his speech of this national unity government. That was the basis for the strategy. But there isn’t one. The Kurds, of the 30 Cabinet ministries, they got three. They haven’t actually even named their people. By their strength in Parliament, they should have had twice as many. They didn’t want to join the government. They did so—and they’ve said this very clearly—only because of very intense U.S. pressure, and because of the deadline of President Obama’s speech. The Sunnis, the members of the government, if any of them live in the Sunni areas of Iraq, they can’t go home. So they aren’t really representing the people who are there. And also, none of those tensions have been solved. Abadi is really—although he speaks better, maybe isn’t as dour and paranoid as his predecessor, he comes from exactly the same party, exactly the same approach, that of a centralized state that is not going to be accommodating to either the Kurds or the Sunnis. So, this national government is not real, and that’s a fundamental problem with the strategy.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday the rapid rise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria can be attributed to the failure of President Obama to assert American influence in the region.

DICK CHENEY: ISIS does not recognize a border between Syria and Iraq, so neither should we. We should immediately hit them in their sanctuaries, staging areas, command centers and lines of communication, wherever we find them. We should provide significantly increased numbers of military trainers, special operations forces and intelligence architecture and air power to aid the Iraqi military and the Kurdish Peshmerga in their counteroffensive againstISIS. We work to defeat ISIS and prevent the establishment of a terrorist safe haven in the heart of the Middle East. We must move globally to get back on offense in the war on terror.

AMY GOODMAN: Aside from criticizing the Obama administration, is what President Obama is doing that different from what Dick Cheney wants, Vijay Prashad?

VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, not really, except, of course, firstly, it’s a hubris matter to take Dick Cheney seriously, who after all was one of the architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which, you know, basically broke the state up completely and provided the opportunity for Iraqi society, which had never really had any kind of al-Qaeda group, to incubate al-Qaeda. So, it’s an odd thing for him to now give advice. But on the other hand, what he’s saying is similar to what Mr. Obama is saying. He’s being more specific. I don’t know what intelligence he is reading, but it’s amazing to hear somebody talk about the Islamic State having command and control centers, supply routes. I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about. This is not a group that’s functioning in the way that he imagines. This is a very different kind of insurgency, much more fragmented. And I’m not sure that it’s going to be so easy to find targets from up on high without people on the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Ambassador Galbraith, the subtitle of your book isWar Without End. Are we now looking at a war without end?

PETER GALBRAITH: Yes. I think President Obama’s strategy may be able to degrade the Islamic State, but there isn’t the prospect of putting together a unified Iraqi government that is going to win over the Sunnis and make them partners in an effort to eradicate ISIS in the Sunni areas of the country. So, this is likely to continue for many years. And in Syria, you know, I thought Syria, in its demography, has a lot of similarities to Lebanon. And that civil war went on for 15 years, and it ended when Syria intervened. But there isn’t a Syria to intervene in Syria, so this war also could go on for decades. It’s a real tragedy for the peoples of that part of the world, and it’s going to be a challenge for U.S. and world foreign policy. We’ve had a lot of talk about pivoting from Europe to Asia, but inevitably we’re going to be focused on this part of the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Galbraith, I want to thank you for being with us, former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, worked on issues involving Iraq since the '80s, former adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government, now with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, among his books, Unintended Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America's Enemies and The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End. And thank you to Professor Vijay Prashad of Trinity College, author of a number of books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter and, most recently, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, what would Dr. King do? Stay with us.

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