Why is there this artificial panic about ISIS in the United States? Why would a majority agree to air-attacks on ISIS, a “strategy” that is very likely to fail and that will certainly create more aggrieved people willing to fight the “west”?
The whole issue does not make sense. Yes, ISIS is dangerous as it is build on a brutal and strict ideology that can attract many, many followers. It was created in the aftermath of the U.S. attack on Iraq. The U.S. czar Bremer disbanded the Iraqi military creating a jobless army of several hundred thousand military men. Additionally his de-Baathification campaign send tenths of thousands of Sunni state employees and technocrats into poverty. The U.S. written Iraqi constitution enshrined sectarianism.
“Western” propaganda tales about the Syrian government “slaughtering Sunnis” – even when the majority of the government was and is Sunni – never made sense. But such claims, repeated over and over again together with empty words about “freedom” and “democracy” helped to mobilize an exceptional force of foreign fighters that has now joined ISIS.
ISIS is dangerous for the people living in Iraq and Syria. It is a threat to some of the governments in the area. But it is neither a threat to the U.S nor to Europe. Even if some ISIS influenced people would blow up something somewhere in Europe it would be jsut another minor event in a decades old series of various homegrown terror incidents. Why is there then a necessity to fight it?
And fight ISIS together with whom?
In Iraq the U.S. pressed for prime minister Maliki to go. The new prime minister Abadi is no less sectarian that Maliki. His cabinet now has 11 Sunni members while Maliki’s had fifteen. The Kurds joined the new government only for a trial period of three month and the two most important ministries, interior and defense, will be, like under Maliki, in the hands of the prime minister himself. How then did this “regime change” move against Maliki change actually anything? Any Iraqi help against ISIS will be sectarian mass slaughter. Any foreign help to the Kurds or the Shia will be abused to create gains solely for that community.
The “moderate rebels” of the “Free Syrian Army” which the CIA is feeding with Saudi dollars and weapons are just a sham. They are criminals and/or religious fanatics and the difference between them and ISIS are tiny. In Lebanon the FSA is openly cooperating with ISIS:
“We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front by attacking the Syrian Army’s gatherings in … Qalamoun,” said Bassel Idriss, the commander of an FSA-aligned rebel brigade.
Some FSA group seems to have kidnapped the journalist (and Mossad spy?) Steven Sotloff and sold him off to ISIS. The later beheading of Sotloff by ISIS was marketed by the Obama administration as one reason to bomb them. Why then not bomb the FSA who kidnapped him in the first place? Weapons delivered through the CIA to FSA rebels are now in the hands of ISIS fighters. Any thought that FSA groups, certainly thoroughly infiltrated by ISIS sympathizers, can somehow help in a campaign against ISIS is pure lunacy.
Then there is the lack of international cooperation in the area. The only two countries who have actually offered help are Iran and Syria. Jordan has asked not to be (officially) involved in the campaign for fear of internal revolt. Turkey, led by an Islamist, is giving comfort and logistic help to ISIS. It has not even labeled ISIS a terrorist group. Israel just helped the Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra to take the Syrian border station on the Golan by shelling the Syrian government position that was trying to prevent that. The Kurds are busy defending their home turf in the mountains against ISIS incursions. They are neither capable nor willing to go on a military offense. The Saudi Arabia dictators fear ISIS because it is more truly Wahhabi then the sham Wahhabi Islamic State construct in Saudi Arabia. Ironically ISIS will likely soon target the Saudi state which ideology and money helped its birth in the first place. The Saudis will not help against ISIS, their spiritual kin, out of fear of such internal strife.
None of the local allies the U.S. wants to use against ISIS is willing or capable to help. The only three forces that offered and could (Syria, Iran, Hizbullah) help against ISIS are seen as hostile by the United States.
How then please can anyone in the U.S. think of a military campaign against ISIS? Without any local allies? With no boots, not even friendly foreign ones, on the ground?
The U.S. now wants some kind of UN Security Council resolution against ISIS. Russia and China should be very, very careful about this. The U.S. is likely to abuse any such resolution to justify a new attack on Syria.