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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| U.S. War against IS Steadily Escalates, Raising Stakes |
| 2014-11-13 |
| [AnNahar] U.S. military action against Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... jihadists in Iraq and Syria began on a small scale three months ago but has steadily expanded in size and scope, raising the stakes for Washington, experts say. The mission has morphed from protecting religious minorities in Iraq to a vow to "destroy" the IS group in both Syria and Iraq, a dramatic shift for an American president who as a candidate was an outspoken opponent of the previous U.S. war in Iraq. "As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into another war in Iraq," President Barack Obama If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon... said on August 7, when he announced the first U.S. air strikes against the IS group in Iraq. But last week, Obama approved reinforcements that will bring the total military footprint to 3,100 troops in Iraq, with a new mission to shape the government army into an effective fighting force. The justification for the initial U.S. bombing raids in August was narrowly defined -- to protect U.S. diplomats in northern Arbil and to prevent a massacre of besieged Yazidis on Mount Sinjar. The United States had no intention of "being the Iraqi air force," Obama said at the time. "But that's explicitly what the United States is now," said Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations. "Mission sets expand, costs go up," he told Agence La Belle France Presse. After more than 800 air strikes, there is no end in sight and U.S. officials say the fight could last years. The step-by-step expansion of the war effort is a familiar pattern for American presidents, and Congress tends to give the commander-in-chief a green light, Zenko said. "Every administration does this. It's not unique to this White House," he said. - Risk of casualties -- The American military advisers are not in a "combat role" but some of them will be based in the frontline province of Anbar in the country's west, a bastion for the IS group. The deployment raises the risk of potential American causalities if the IS group overruns an Iraqi air base there or if it manages to down an American helicopter with a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile, though U.S. officers insist those are remote scenarios. The biggest risk of the expanding campaign is the notorious "slippery slope," with Washington increasingly pulled into the multi-sided civil war in Syria and pressure mounting to employ more military power to turn the tide, experts say. Obama has pledged not to send ground forces into combat but some Republican politicians already have urged him to order in forward air controllers to direct air strikes by coalition warplanes, a proposal favored by some top brass. - Reliving the Iraq war - The U.S. military recommended more advisers as it has pinned its hopes on nine brigades in the Iraqi army, which are deemed good enough to be trained for an eventual counter-attack. The strategy resembles the effort undertaken during the American occupation of 2003-2011, when advisers worked with Iraqi units and Sunni tribes to fight al-Qaeda holy warriors, said Robert Scales, a retired U.S. Army major general. But as the Iraqi forces train, the IS jihadists will have time to strengthen their hold on territory, stockpile weapons and recruit more young fighters, Scales wrote in the Washington Post. "If nine Iraqi brigades with their U.S. advisers can't do it next year, the clock will keep ticking. And Obama will have two options: Accept an Islamic State 'caliphate' that occupies much of Iraq and Syria or add more U.S. forces to the opposition," Scales wrote. Daniel Bolger, a retired lieutenant general who led troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, warned Wednesday the United States runs the risk of repeating the mistakes of "two failed wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan by relying on military action to solve political problems. In a New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... commentary, Bolger argued the military's experience in Iraq has been misunderstood in Washington and that the 2007 troop surge was not the success it has been portrayed as. "The surge in Iraq did not 'win' anything. It bought time," he wrote of the reinforcements sent to salvage the war. "But in the end, shackled to a corrupt, sectarian government in Baghdad and hobbled by our fellow Americans' unwillingness to commit to a fight lasting decades, the surge just forestalled today's stalemate," he said. Now the United States faces the same "If insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, I think we're there." |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #1 Just another example of how the liberals do not have anything except one playbook. I am seeing LBJ and JFK in Viet Nam all over again in the way nowhere man is approaching ISIS, Iraq and Syria. An incoherent trickle of assets designed to stay disengaged but offer a tempting target to the opposition to precipitate engagement and a propaganda score. |
| Posted by: Bill Clinton 2014-11-13 18:52 |