Ramadi

[MD]

ISIS has just captured a strategic city, Ramadi. Ramadi is the gateway to Baghdad, so ISIS is within striking distance of Baghdad.

ISIS captures all of Ramadi in Iraq - CBS News

This is disturbing news, because ISIS is supposed to be a ragtag army with old AK-47s, being continuously bombed by U.S.A. and Iran. Everyone thought they would lose, but they are expanding and capturing entire cities in Iraq, not to mention their expansions in Libya, Afghanistan, Syria and even Pakistan.

I think ISIS' success is for many reasons:
1) They provide some security and stability
2) They tap into the global Islam fantasies of many young jihadists
3) They are organized and well funded and well supplied
4) For every thousand troops that die, thousands more join

A lot of the blame falls on Bush and some even on Obama. But I think ISIS has state sponsors, there is no way these guys would be defeating the Iraqi army and shia militias without coordinated logistical support and arms. Given that Assad is losing in Syria, there is a good chance whichever faction replaces him will be a nightmarish jihadist faction.

What is the best solution here? Breakup of Iraq? Ground troops? Dropping educational leaflets authored by Richard Dawkins ?

 

[metis]

I think the best solution is for us in the west to really get out of the area in general, but provide some supply and logistics support for those in the region that we need to protect. No western country, including the U.S., can afford to keep the probably hundred thousand plus troops that may be needed to stop this movement over maybe several decades.

 

[MD]

I think the best solution is for us in the west to really get out of the area in general, but provide some supply and logistics support for those in the region that we need to protect. No western country, including the U.S., can afford to keep the probably hundred thousand plus troops that may be needed to stop this movement over maybe several decades.

ISIS has taken another large city in Syria, by name Palmyra which has a large Syrian weapons dump.

There is a good chance that if the U.S. pulls out ISIS will continue to expand and possibly join up with other hundreds of thousands of jihadists. Their manifesto said that they will first take Mosul, then Damascus (which I think is very likely now) and then finally Jerusalem. It won't be conventional.

I think ground troops are warranted at this point and the redrawing of Iraq into three autonomous zones is the best solution. The Sunnis will always support Sunni jihadists over Shi'a despots.

 

[Iti oj]

Dropping educational leaflets authored by Richard Dawkins ?

made my day.

 

[MD]

http://www.newsweek.com/monitor-islamic-state-takes-control-over-half-syria-334316

 

[metis]

ISIS has taken another large city in Syria, by name Palmyra which has a large Syrian weapons dump.

There is a good chance that if the U.S. pulls out ISIS will continue to expand and possibly join up with other hundreds of thousands of jihadists. Their manifesto said that they will first take Mosul, then Damascus (which I think is very likely now) and then finally Jerusalem. It won't be conventional.

I think ground troops are warranted at this point and the redrawing of Iraq into three autonomous zones is the best solution. The Sunnis will always support Sunni jihadists over Shi'a despots.

I agree that Iraq probably would best be divided, but I have very strong doubts that this would suit ISIS as being acceptable.

As far as ground troops are concerned, in how many countries and for how long will the U.S. be willing to send them in? From a former U.S. general, I heard him say it would take over 100,000 troops occupying large areas of the region for at least a couple of decades, and then leaving a large remnant to make certain that these radical elements don't revive. Are you willing to do this?

 

[gsa]

ISIS has taken another large city in Syria, by name Palmyra which has a large Syrian weapons dump.

There is a good chance that if the U.S. pulls out ISIS will continue to expand and possibly join up with other hundreds of thousands of jihadists. Their manifesto said that they will first take Mosul, then Damascus (which I think is very likely now) and then finally Jerusalem. It won't be conventional.

I think ground troops are warranted at this point and the redrawing of Iraq into three autonomous zones is the best solution. The Sunnis will always support Sunni jihadists over Shi'a despots.

American ground troops? You think that any president can sell another war in Iraq (and now Syria) to the American public? No way. Now, I know that supporters of this idea like to come back and counter with polling that shows a substantial majority favoring ground troops. But don't believe those polls for a minute. There is a reason that the proposed AUMF has stalled in Congress, and a reason that the Republican Party will not simply craft its own proposal:

Republicans and Democrats prefer scrapping or substantially changing the administration's draft. The former says an authorization would handcuff the president and military; the latter says it would fail to prevent another massive American ground operation in the Middle East.

The Obama administration's measure would prohibit US forces from engaging in "enduring offensive ground combat operations" — but no one on Capitol Hill seems to know what those five words mean when placed in that order and applied to the ongoing military operations.

During public and private meetings, Obama administration witnesses have yet to assuage Democrats, who believe the phrase is too open-ended, or Republicans, who view it as too limiting.

Most 2016 Republican presidential candidates are not willing to commit to American ground troops either. Of course, they are willing to call for Arab boots on the ground, which is what makes this so funny:

What’s strange about this “boots on the ground, but not our boots” position is that it’s the same position as the Obama administration’s. They act as though the Obama administration has been too shy to ask, or that regional nations don’t have their own politics and interests at stake. Who is going to fight ISIS in the region? The groups that have been most active thus far have been Iraqi Shiite militias and the Iranian Quds Force, but we can’t have that. Marco Rubio talks a good game about simply asking Sunni Arab nations to pick up the slack on the ground. But who? Saudi Arabia? They’re concerned about ISIS activity in their own borders, but they’re not going to deploy massive numbers of ground troops to Iraq to fight Sunnis or do anything that might help Iran, and Shiite militias in Iraq wouldn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat for Saudi Arabia. This is not easy. Hence the current problems.

Our Sunni Arab partners, useful allies that they are, just want the United States to go in and do all the work ourselves — and to do it absent any corroboration with Shiite militias in a way that might empower Iran’s strength in the region. And so we get handcuffed situations like Ramadi, where the U.S. insists that the Iraqi army does the fighting, but then the Iraqi army just walks off the job, and then the Iraqi people get all mad at us and their prime minister for not turning to Shiite militias for help. There’s no simple answer to this.

ISIS is awful and we need to take measures against them insofar as they are a security and humanitarian threat, but the entire region is led by anti-democratic war criminals and extremists who are now engaged in a regional proxy war between Iran and KSA, both of which are simply slightly more moderate Shiite and Sunni versions of the Islamic state.