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I've long appreciated the War Nerd's insight, knowledge, and humor about historical and current foreign policy. In three articles, the War Nerd breaks down the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and makes it clear how little threat ISIS really poses.
First, the War Nerd analyses the supposed scary and menacing ISIS advance on the Syrian Kurdish village of Kobanei as insignificant and a pathetic year-long campaign by ISIS that highlights its weakness rather than its strength.
Next the War Nerd wonders why while the U.S. is bombs away on ISIS that Israel has been quiet, pointing out, "Nobody ever seems to mention it, but the supposedly fearsome IS now owns the ground right under Israel’s Golan Heights fortifications, after moving in in June 2014 when the weary SAA, tired of being shelled by the IDF, moved out. So IS has been in place right there on Israel’s border for months now—and there’s been no attack from Israel. Yes, folks, you might actually get the impression that the Israelis—who know a thing or two about threat assessment—just don’t take IS very seriously."
Last, the War Nerd debunks the recent claims that ISIS is an advancing threat on Baghdad, "Islamic State isn’t looming over Baghdad so much as sulking outside it, in the final Sunni enclave — stalled out and dreaming of a return to the hegemony the Sunni held over the city ten years ago. And if you really think that Baghdad, which is now firmly in Shia hands, is like some damsel in distress, just waiting to be ravished by big, bad IS…well, you haven’t been following the record of the Shia militias which drove the Sunni out in the first place."
So why is the U.S. escalating?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 13 2014, @12:21PM
AC's post sucked, but the reason why his summary of it sucking was correct is that proposed alliance is hopeless. Despite the best efforts of propaganda, multicultural empires like Ottoman, Austrian, USSR, and USA, and on the smaller scale, places like Iraq, are inherently unstable and short term and ineffective. So yeah, go ahead and make the "second ottoman reich" or whatever you want to call it, its not going to last longer than a lifetime or so, and in a generation they'll just be weaker than now.
So go ahead, ISIS, try to recreate the ottoman empire. That was a pitiful excuse for an empire but when your opponents are individual viking warriors and Germans wearing animal skins and helmets with horns on them, it will survive pretty well, when the opponents are post 18th or so century tech level and monocultural / culturally unified, the ottomans were simply doomed. Their only hope is something like economic collapse or the end of the oil era or ebola or another plague bringing the rest of the world back to pre 18th century technology and population.
If they are a threat, this is the only way they're a threat. They need one infected agent snuck across our wide open unguarded borders with a train ticket to DC... thats all. They don't need nukes or air craft carriers or smart bombs when their opponents no longer have the tech basis to create them. We've already got Walmart and the FIRE sector of the economy and MTV and even worse, MBAs, trying to destroy America and being fairly successful at it so far, so they don't have to do much other than laugh and point although they could "help the process along" a bit.
As a thought experiment, aside from human suffering, which never enters into political / economic decisions anyway, whats the worst case scenario when they take over the deserts and turn it into a fascistic xenophobic dictatorial paradise. That's basically, what, a slightly righter wing version of Nevada today and California before we started temporarily irrigating it? Ah, I know, its basically Utah on the other side of the planet. I'm not really seeing a problem with coexisting with them. Most of "our" oil is pumped out from underneath them so that doesn't matter and when they wipe Israel off the map they'll either take over the orange groves and keep selling, or we'll buy Florida oranges. The USA will find a new poster child puppet state to keep the military industrial complex in business, maybe South Korea or we can continue to meddle in the Balkans until the Russians get Really pissed off with us, anyway. So the problem with letting them take over is what, exactly? Go ahead. Not really worth getting our soldiers killed over a pile of sand.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 13 2014, @12:55PM
One of your own oversights is, you think that the Caliphate needs to be permanent to be effective. The "alliance", as you refer to it, need only last a decade to effectively set mankind back hundreds of years.
You mention the virulent ebola victim on a train ride from the Mexican border to D.C. Follow that idea up with a more coordinated effort. 20, or even 50 victims traveling by auto from the east coast to the west, while 20 to 50 more victims travel from the west to the east. At every stop for fuel or food, more people are exposed to the virus. Meanwhile, 20 to 50 MORE victims make it their business to expire in Washington D.C. and the surrounding environs.
Now, where is the US in the following months and years?
It matters little how permanent the caliphate might be, after we have suffered such a devastating blow. 9/11/01 would be nothing in comparison to 150 virulent plague carriers criss crossing the continent. It would be less than nothing, in terms of human suffering, economic hardship, military defeat, and technological base. Every aspect of human life would suffer here.
And, IS has the zealots who are mentally and psychologically capable of carrying out such an attack. The actual plague carriers need not even be aware of how they are being used - it only takes a small number of dedicated technicians to pull it off.
A decade later - how much are our survivors going to care about the mideast?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @08:38PM
Ebola is a FLUID-borne infection.
To become an airborne infection, that pathogen would have to mutate in incredible ways (and, in the process, would likely lose its deadly nature).
To have this traveler(s)-spreading-a-plague scheme work with Ebola, you would have to have people who are infected but don't look so sick that everybody would know to avoid them.
With the active stage of the illness, that is a narrow window.
The effective method would be to find people who had survived the infection but who remain contagious (a strange ailment indeed).
Very hot chicks who are very promiscuous would be the ticket.
That's a very small subset of a very small subset of a very small subset.
Oh, and, once again, I recommend that people stop consuming Lamestream Media.
They aren't accurate worth a damn and they purposely try to stoke your emotions.
I particularly recommend against the Murdock/Ailes brand of hand-waving swill.
Fox so-called News Viewers Less Informed Than Those Who Watch No News At All [google.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 13 2014, @01:14PM
I agree with the main thrust of your post: the Middle East has always been a mess and always will be, so why meddle?
It's worth pointing out that we in the West now don't think much of the Ottoman Empire, but it lasted for 600 years, a pretty good run. And our European friends were conquered by them in good part (if you lived in the Balkans) and had the rest very strongly threatened a couple of times beyond that (Siege of Vienna). Their territories extended pretty much over as much acreage as the Roman Empire, and they were as technically modern as their contemporaries and rivals for most of their run. Then and today Istanbul was and is as multi-cultural as a small handful of world cities like London, Paris, and New York. So the disregard in your post is not supported by the history.
It's also worth pointing out that there is a bit of a strategic worry for the United States from ISIS, in that if they attack Turkey we get pulled in by the NATO defense clause. Until then it's a complicated question for Ankara because ISIS is beating up on the Kurds, which is just fine by Ankara because they don't like the Kurds and have been gnashing their teeth at the PKK running to succor across the border in quasi-independent Kurdistan for a decade now. On the other hand, when all those Kurds fleeing ISIS run across the Turkish border then Ankara gets even *more* Kurds it has to officially worry about. It's sort of a lose-lose-lose for them at the moment.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 13 2014, @02:50PM
"we get pulled in by the NATO defense clause"
If we postulate that the constitution is just a piece of toilet paper, then its no great extension of that concept to the NATO treaty.
You are correct that the best strategy at this time for Turkey is to fund a proxy war by arming / helping out / turning a blind eye toward the Kurds if they want the status quo.
On the other hand, if they got everyone else involved on their side, they'd probably gain power over neighboring territory, although this might be an interesting way to get kicked out of NATO. Then again if the EU and/or Turkey formally decide to give up on their multi year engagement instead of getting married, its quite possible depending on how brutal the breakup goes, they'd get kicked out of NATO anyway, so may as well try to grab some territory while they can.
Its an interesting puzzle for Turkey. Lets say the odds of eventual EU membership are 75% and the odds of that outcome being positive are about 75%. Don't forget that the propaganda message is EU membership is always a universal good, look at how well off Germany is economically, or Belgium. For a good time tell that to the man on the street in the PIIGS. So its about 50/50 good outcome if they cooperate with the EU and act like members of a team. That means they only need "somewhat above 50% odds of success" if they want to grab some territory with NATO help. Of course grabbing territory doesn't guarantee a successful outcome (see the USA in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Russia in pretty much the entire USSR and also Afghanistan). So are the odds of being a successful EU member higher or lower than the odds of going it alone and grabbing some territory? And if "go it alone" fails, well, pick a fall guy and reapply to the EU, can't blame all those powerless citizens for one crazy guy. Which sounds a lot like the political structure of Turkey today in 2014, so I think their leadership has already made up their mind and is just waiting to act. There doesn't seem to be a possible failure scenario for Turkey as long as after they're outta NATO and EU, ISIS doesn't completely take them over, which the west and the Russians probably won't permit anyway, but that failure would set us up for WWI-redo with once Turkey collapses who gets to take things over, and other than everyone agreeing it won't be ISIS there isn't much agreement.
So in summary I'm guessing they're leaning toward attack ISIS, try to get NATOs help, possibly get kicked out of NATO and shut down the EU negotiations, and if it works out be a small regional independent power, and if it fails blame it all on their current crazy leader and reapply for EU and maybe NATO when a new strongman is in charge.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 14 2014, @02:31PM
That would be fine, except that would not be the precedent to set at a moment when Russia is once again knocking on Europe's door. The US would not renege on the NATO defense clause if Turkey invokes it. And they nearly invoked it when Assad shot down a Turkish fighter last year.
It's quite important to consider that Turks are not Arabs, and consider themselves in many ways the bringers of civilization and light to the backward Arabs. They are far more cosmopolitan than anybody else in the region. Their economic strength and secular government represent in many ways a positive example of modernity for the region as well.
But as a country straddling two continents and cultures as Turkey does, there is a lot of complexity. There are the forces that identify more with Europe, and which have been seeking EU membership and fueling the protests against Erdogan's Islamic party, and then there are the parochial Islamist forces who constitute Erdogan's base who yearn for a return to hegemony. But the trouble is there are too many realities standing in the way of hegemony. There's Iran, Kurds, Palestinians, Russian, and Israel. They'd have to chop through a lot of pretty solid relationships and interests to return to Ottoman hegemony.
Through all of that, though, it doesn't make much sense for Turkey to go it alone at this point. Staying out of the EU and getting out of NATO would significantly complicate their ambitions, whatever they decide to be.
Washington DC delenda est.