Obama Has A “Strategy” Now!
By Taj Hashmi
17 September, 2014
Countercurrents.org
One may not subscribe to the conspiracy theories that imaginative Muslims have been circulating since 9/11 attacks, the latest being the portrayal of the ISIS “Caliph” as a Jewish, planted by Israel to further destabilize the region. One may, however, consider the formation of Obama’s “Coalition of the Willing” of more than 30 countries against the so-called Islamic State a ridiculous idea; or ominously, even a ploy to eventually invade Syria and Iran, as per the Pentagon Plan, leaked by retired General Wesley Clark in 2007.
Peace loving people everywhere heaved a sigh of relief at President Obama’s earlier declaration about not having a “strategy yet” to counter the ISIS threat, soon after this enigmatic terrorist group captured Mosul and parts of northern Iraq. They hoped Obama would not intervene in Iraq and Syria militarily. However, the hope was dashed. On the eve of the 13th anniversary of 9/11, Obama seemed to have succumbed to the pressure of U.S. warmongers, who consider the rise of ISIS as the prelude to another 9/11.
Obama ordered airstrikes on Syria to rout the ISIS militants. He allocated 500 additional military advisers to Iraq, and simultaneously rejected talks of an all-out war. As of mid-September, the U.S. allocated $500 million to train 5,000 fighters to fight against the ISIS. We were told, it could take three years or more to defeat the 30,000 ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria (some sources give the figure of 100,000), who have less than 100 battle tanks and field guns and no air force.
One wonders, if the U.S. is going to spend billions of dollars over the years in just training Iraqis to fight the ISIS as it did in Afghanistan to train Afghans to fight the Taliban! What Thomas Friedman once told about the ridiculous idea of spending billions to train Afghans to fight is relevant to what America is going to repeat in Iraq: “Americans’ training Afghan to fight is like someone training Brazilians to play soccer ….Who are training the Taliban? …. American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan may be compared with an unemployed couple’s adopting a child”. It seems “Who are training the ISIS fighters?” is another taboo of a question to the U.S. Administration.
We know the ISIS or IS (Ad-Dawlaht ul-Islamiyya) does not pose any security threat to the U.S. or Europe, let alone any existential threat to countries in the region, especially war-torn Syria and Iraq. We also know that as there are various geopolitical factors behind the enigmatic rise of this terror outfit as an “Islamic State”, and the “forerunner” of a transnational “Caliphate”; so are there vested interest groups across the region and in distant capitals – Washington, London, Ottawa and Canberra – who have hyped up the ISIS menace as a much bigger security threat than al Qaeda or its ilk ever posed to the West and its allies. The ISIS is no longer a “non-state actor” but a “state actor” in the military sense of the expressions. Since states cannot resort to unconventional methods of warfare, tiny Lebanon is capable of defeating the Islamic State in a conventional war.
America and its allies want the overthrow of the Syrian and Iranian regimes, and are paradoxically fighting the ISIS, which has also been fighting Assad, and all pro-Iranian elements in Syria and Iraq. One wonders why the enemy’s enemy is not a friend to the West! This “paradox” looks quite ominous. The American, British, Australian and other Western nations definitely want to go well beyond crushing the enigmatic and vulnerable ISIS, which Peter Baker thinks is nothing but “Extending a Legacy of War”. He believes by ordering a sustained military campaign against the ISIS, President Obama “ensured that he would pass his successor a volatile and incomplete war, much like the one he inherited when he took office”. As Baker considers the war against ISIS “the next chapter in a generational struggle”, his arguments corroborate this writer’s belief that the world is already witnessing another “Hundred-Year War” since the birth of Israel in 1948.
Despite his prior rejection of all-out war in Iraq and Syria, President Obama seems to have yielded to the pressure of the Military Industrial Complex, which wants to drag America to another long war. Apparently, Obama’s strategy is about authorizing air attacks on ISIS-held territories in Iraq and Syria without the Congress and UN approval. We do not agree with analysts who believe that Obama’s war on ISIS is a distraction from preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, which is still very important to America, and the first priority for Israel. Interestingly, the ISIS has not yet identified Israel as enemy, and ISIS fighters publicly set fire to the Palestinian flag.
All wars that America fought since the end of World War II, were without Congress approval, hence illegal. Obama’s strategy of launching air attacks on Syrian territory, without the permission of Syrian government – purportedly to defeat the ISIS – amounts to a violation of international law. Unfortunately, as terrorist outfits do not respect international law, so does the U.S., the second largest democracy in the world.
It seems, Obama Strategy is not going to accomplish what it purportedly aims at achieving: defeating the ISIS to restore peace, and good governance in Iraq, Syria and throughout the region. Obama’s open support for rebels and dissidents to overthrow the Syrian and Iranian regimes, and his unwillingness to collaborate with Syria and Iran to defeat the ISIS are bound to back fire. While Ayatollah Khameini believes the ISIS was “made-in-the-USA”, most Iraqi Sunnis consider their government as a bigger threat than the ISIS. As Syrian rebels are least interested to fight the ISIS, so is the ISIS uninterested in fighting them. Arab leaders’ tepid support for the war efforts will not give rich dividends either. They are nervous about domestic backlash from participation in America’s war efforts against ISIS.
Again, Obama does not want a replay of Bush’s Iraq War of 2003. His strategy is not about launching another “shock-and-awe” like 2003 as he does not want the war on ISIS look like another American war. If the Obama strategy is all about routing the ISIS with ineffective air attacks, it is bound to fail. However, if the real strategy is about regime change operations in Syria and Iran, then it is altogether a different matter.
The writer teaches security studies at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, U.S. Sage has recently published his latest book, Global Jihad and America: The Hundred-Year War Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.
Comments are moderated