Middle East Strategy – Page 18

Monday Wake Up Call – October 5, 2015

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Saturday that he opposes a unilateral American no-fly zone in Syria. This differentiates him from Hillary Clinton who wants to create one. Mr. Sanders:

We must be very careful about not making a complex and dangerous situation in Syria even worse…I support President Obama’s efforts to combat ISIS in Syria while at the same time supporting those in that country trying to remove the brutal dictatorship of Bashar Assad.

Ms. Clinton’s position is the same as Republican contenders Florida governor Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and failed CEO Carly Fiorina, making all of them the “Quagmire Candidates”. Think about it: A US enforced no-fly zone over northern Syria could mean starting a war with Russia, who now controls that air space.

The Quagmire Candidates are ok with possibly attacking Russian forces in order to defend al-Qaeda?

Remember, our CIA and our Gulf State allies are funding al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. The NYT says: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The fighters advancing on that [northern] front were not from the Islamic State but from the Army of Conquest, a group that includes an affiliate of Al Qaeda known as the Nusra Front and other Islamist groups, including several more secular groups that have been covertly armed and trained by the US.

A second NYT article on 10/1 about the Army of Conquest: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The alliance consists of a number of mostly Islamist factions, including the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate; Ahrar al-Sham, another large group; and more moderate rebel factions that have received covert arms support from the intelligence services of the United States and its allies.

Clinton, Fiorina, Bush and Kasich have all endorsed the idea of forbidding Russian use of air space and operations in Syria and a willingness to fight the Russians to enforce such a thing. So, we have SEVERAL presidential candidates who should never be allowed near the position of Commander-In-Chief.

And why? What is there about (or in) Syria that is worth the risk of nuclear war to America? The Russians would have to agree to any US “no-fly zone” and it is difficult understanding how they would agree to it. Would we really engage Russia in an air war to settle the point about who controls the skies over Syria?

Will the main stream media even ask Hillary, Jeb, Carly or Kasich why they want to start World War III? Or, why America is supporting Jihadists in Syria?

This is potentially more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it is beyond aggravating that these candidates can’t see it.

Our national security policy skews macho, and has since the 1950s. And the chest-beaters in Congress want Mr. Obama to appear weak, while our media continues to stir up trouble to keep these contradictions on the front burner.

This is why some Democrats have problems with Hillary Clinton. Her foreign policy position is “Republican Lite.” She consistently holds a near-bellicose position, similar to many Republicans. She supported our actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Apparently quagmires poll well.

So, our wake-up is for the America voter: Here are Lords of the New Church doing “Open Your Eyes (to the lies right in front of you)”. Their line, ‘the acting’s lousy but the blind don’t know’ is as true today as it was in 1982 when this was recorded:

The Lords were fronted by the late Stiv Bators, who previously fronted the Dead Boys. Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right hosted Mr. Bators and crew at our place in 1978. But, talk of recording an album there never materialized.

Sample Lyrics:
Video games train the kids for war
Army chic in high-fashion stores
Law and order’s done their job
Prisons filled while the rich still rob
Assassination politics
Violence rules within’ our nation’s midst
Well ignorance is their power tool
You’ll only know what they want you to know
The television cannot lie
Controlling media with smokescreen eyes
Nuclear politicians’ picture show
The acting’s lousy but the blind don’t know

Open your eyes see the lies right in front of ya.

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 4, 2015

Quite the week. Another mass shooting, Kim Davis said she met the Pope, Russia drops bombs in Syria, and we dodge another government shut-down.

The shooting in Oregon was a huge tragedy, but the Right says the shooter was a member of a “well-regulated militia”, so there is nothing we can do:

When He heard about the Kim Davis meeting, God tweeted:

Despite the hype by Ms. Davis’ camp, the Vatican said:

The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects…

We avoided the shut-down, but expect to see it again in December:

Can cooler heads prevail in the GOP? That’s a no-Boehner:

The foreign policy conversation in the US remains fixed on the idea that we can dictate terms to whomever we want, where ever we want, on whatever timetable we want. And we love, love the idea of regime change:

With the Planned Parenthood hearings, the GOP made its real position clear:

Why the Hysteria about Russia and Syria?

Tom Friedman gets it right:

Today’s reigning cliché is that the wily fox, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, has once again outmaneuvered the flat-footed Americans, by deploying some troops, planes and tanks to Syria to buttress the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and to fight the Islamic State forces threatening him. If only we had a president who was so daring, so tough, so smart.

The hysterical neocon viewpoint was amply represented by who else but John McCain, who told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that he could confirm that Russia’s initial strikes were:

Against our Free Syrian Army (FSA) or groups that have been armed and trained by the CIA, because we have communications with people there.

There was no similar howl of angst when NATO member Turkey started bombing the West’s friends the Kurds, instead of ISIS. So, no hypocrisy here.

And McCain calls them our FSA? We have no FSA, although the CIA trains a few groups. The prevailing neocon fantasy, that we could have prevented the Syrian mess by training and arming a bigger, badder “Free Syrian Army”, continues to pollute the Syrian issue, preventing honest debate. We trained and armed a million soldiers in Vietnam, 300,000+ in Iraq, and tens of thousands in Afghanistan. How did those efforts work out?

And our training of Syrian “moderate rebels” has been a total bust.

But, the Russians’ first foray didn’t hit ISIS, they hit other groups. Word is they hit targets north and west of Homs (al-Rastan, Talbisah and al-Zafaraaneh). This is an area controlled not by ISIS, but other rebel groups. And right on cue, we heard that they hit the Syrian “moderates”.

Imagine, the US couldn’t find “moderate” rebels for 3 years, but the Russians found them in 24 hours!

McCain characterized the Russian air strikes as:

An incredible flouting of any kind of cooperation or effort to conceal what their first — Putin’s priority is. And that is of course to prop up Bashar al-Assad.

It’s time for the US to move on. We need to accept the reality that Assad won’t be dealt with until the Islamist threat in Syria and Iraq is contained. It’s also time to let the Russians have a shot at containing the Islamist threat. Whatever Russia’s entry into Syria does for the confrontation with ISIS, it has clarified our thinking. Our strategy says we can’t work with Assad and Iran to attack ISIS. Putin’s strategy says work with Assad and Iran to attack Assad’s enemies and ISIS simultaneously:

• Putin’s first priority will be to secure the Russian base at Tartus and its air base at Latakia. That is what he has done with his initial strikes, as some insurgents have already tried to hit the Russian air base with rockets.
• After securing western and central Syria, Russia will work to take out ISIS, starting with eliminating a few ISIS groups that threaten Russian territory.

So, what should we be doing? Col. Pat Lang has a few ideas:

1. Obama should act as if Russia and Iran are more than just rivals and adversaries. This will take courage and leadership on his part to explain to the American people.
2. Obama must fully coordinate operations, intelligence analysis sharing and logistics with Russian and Iran.
3. We should forget about positive contributions to the ISIS fight from Turkey. Turkey is a major part of the problem.
4. We should ignore Saudi Arabia’s wishes with regard to Syria, since they support the jihadis.

Friedman describes the big advantage to letting Putin take the lead in Syria:

Let’s say the US did nothing right now, and just let Putin start bombing ISIS and bolstering Assad. How long before every Sunni Muslim in the Middle East, not to mention every jihadist, has Putin’s picture in a bull’s eye on his cellphone?

No one is arguing that Bashar al-Assad is a benevolent leader, but when US media and analysts at some think tanks start describing al-Qaeda as “moderate”, we need to rethink our strategy. Again.

You can’t go into Syria under the pretext of fighting ISIS and simultaneously try to depose Assad, only to gripe when Russia also goes into Syria under the pretext of fighting ISIS and props up Assad.

That sword cuts both ways.

The bottom line is that the US, and its ME and European allies are going to have to admit that getting rid of Assad is a secondary priority to our absolute requirement to contain and ultimately eliminate the threat from ISIS. They also must admit that none of the groups that the CIA and our ME allies have trained and supported represent a viable alternative to the Assad regime.

The sooner we do, the sooner Syria will cease to be the jihadi chessboard du jour, on which ISIS and a civil war in Syria have left hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead.

We need to turn a corner. Our current thinking has failed.

9-11-2001

It is now 14 years since this happened:

South Tower falls: 9:59am September 11, 2001

And 14 years on, what have we learned? In Islam, there is an idea that you should deal with your local problems first, and not worry about the far enemy. But, bin Laden believed that in his world, you could not do that. Revolution at home was almost impossible because of the far enemy, the US. As long as the US was the superpower, Islamic revolutionary success would be limited because the US could cripple your economy via sanctions, and it had the military might to attack you with overwhelming force.

Bin Laden’s argument was that the US had to be defeated, at least as regards its ability to project power in the ME. He thought that the evils being done by local regimes (such as Iraq’s Hussein, or Egypt’s Mubarak) could not be ended by simply fighting the local regime, but that the far regime that was their protector, must also be defeated.

Whatever you think of bin Laden, his most powerful point to those in the ME was that the US was responsible both for the suffering the US caused directly through sanctions, and the suffering caused indirectly, by keeping Middle Eastern dictators in power.

To that, bin Laden added a decisive idea: Attack the US.

Fourteen years later, we remain in a quagmire. Thanks a heap, Osama bin Laden. With a small number of supporters, less than $500,000, and 19 suicidal hijackers, most of them Saudis, you pulled off your geopolitical magic trick. On this 14th anniversary, Tom Englehardt asks a few questions:

• Fourteen years later, don’t you find it improbable that the US military has been unable to extricate itself from Iraq and Afghanistan, its two major wars of this century?
• Fourteen years later, don’t you find it improbable that Washington’s post-9/11 policies in the Middle East helped lead to the establishment of the Islamic State’s “Caliphate” in parts of Iraq and Syria and to a movement of almost unparalleled extremism that has successfully “franchised” itself out from Libya to Nigeria to Afghanistan?
• If, on September 12, 2001, you had predicted such a possibility, who wouldn’t have thought you mad?

This brings us to the 2016 presidential election. Sarah Palin on CNN last Sunday, said she’d “rather have a tough president than one who can win at trivial pursuit.” As Ed Kilgore wrote:

By saying that she prefers a “tough” president like Donald Trump, Palin is endorsing his bullying Alpha-male routine against all those emasculated men who know stuff.

So, more of the same from the GOP.

To be fair, “knowing stuff” is a necessary, but insufficient criterion. Obviously, Trump doesn’t seem to have the “necessary” part down just yet. Republicans try to convince us that the challenges we face in the world are simple, and we must be realists, and aggressively go after what we want. It all comes down to “good vs evil.” For Reagan, it was the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union. And for George W. Bush, it was the “axis of evil” made up of Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

Sadly, we live in an extremely complex world, and ignorance of its complexity is dangerous. Remember in 2006, there were reports that George W. Bush was unaware of the difference between Shia and Sunni as late as two months before the Iraq invasion. Combine that with Cheney’s Exceptionalist ideology, (which remained on display this week), and we all paid a huge price for that ignorance.

The reality is that if tough talk is divorced from knowledge, you do dumb things…like start dumb wars that diminish our standing in the world – and that cost us terribly in lives and money.

The GOP considers diplomacy, compromise, or nonviolent remedies to be weak and ineffective. It never occurs to them that knowledge, perspective and persistence are also forms of strength.

We should be very clear that the presidency is no place for bullies. And rather than signifying weakness, traits like compassion, thoughtfulness and collaboration are exactly the kind of thing we need in our leader.

We need to re-learn how to exist in in an ambiguous world without shutting down, or being ineffectual. Lately when things get tough, we strut, shorten our attention spans, prefer form over substance and pray to god that it all works out…we have all become George W. Bush!

Let’s remember the 9/11 heroes and victims.

But let’s stop listening to those who pander to our fears.

The Middle East Migrant Crisis

Thousands of migrants–some refugees, some not–are making their way from Islamic countries in the Middle East and Asia to Turkey, then to Greece, Macedonia, Austria and finally, for many, Germany. The largest number come from Syria, but other Islamic countries are represented from as far away as Afghanistan.

The Atlantic reported on the numbers: The number of migrants who have crossed the EU’s borders this year: 340,000. The European Union’s population: 508.2 million. Thus, currently, incoming migrants are 0.067% of the total population. Syria—which is in the midst of a civil war—is the largest source for these migrants. That conflict has created 4 million refugees.

• Of these, 1.9 million are in Turkey (population 75 million),
• 1.1 million are in Lebanon (population 4.4 million),
• 629,245 in Jordan (population 6.459 million).

The US has about 1,500—though that number could increase. There are zero in the Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia.

Today’s Afghans and Pakistani refugees are economic refugees. But the Syrians are not economic refugees, they are refugees from war and chaos. They are seeking refuge from a civil war which has been exacerbated by ISIS. That the US, Turkey and the Gulf Countries are actively waging war on Syrian soil vs. ISIS adds to the plight of the Syrians.

And it is about to get worse for the Syrians. From the NYT:

Russia has sent a military advance team to Syria and is taking other steps the United States fears may signal that President Vladimir V. Putin is planning to vastly expand his military support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, administration officials said Friday.

The Russian moves include transport of prefabricated housing units to Latakia, Syria’s principal port city, and the delivery of a portable air traffic control station there.

All this occurs on top of the US, Turkey and Arab forces implementing new plans to enter Syria in order to fight ISIS, primarily using more air attacks. That may explain Russia’s actions, since, from the start of the civil war in Syria, Russia has made it clear that they would not tolerate a “no fly zone” over Syria. In 2013, Russian officials, including a strongly worded statement by Putin, formally objected to a Syrian “no fly zone”, which may now be precisely a goal of the US.

So, Syrians should expect more instability in the name of creating stability. More will leave town.

This means that the situation is utterly intractable. An intractable situation is not a “problem” that can be “solved”: It is a fact which must be reckoned with.

Over time, it is likely that there will be a huge internal backlash against European politicians, like Germany’s Ms. Merkel, if more migrants are allowed into the EU. Wages are stagnant or falling in Europe and unemployment is still high. The last thing people in Europe want right now is more competition in the labor market. Parties on the extreme right will profit from this while the center right will lose support.

Why are Ms. Merkel and other leaders in the EU willing to pay this price? Theories abound regarding what to do about this tsunami of refugees/migrants. Here is Jim Kunstler: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

So, the idea that the nations currently [believing] themselves “rich” can take in, shelter, and employ the masses fleeing MENA (and elsewhere) is absurd. Somehow the people in charge, plus the intellectual classes who shape opinion and consensus, are going to have to arrive at some clear notion of limits and boundaries.

There have been irresistible human migrations throughout time, and Western nations are witnessing the beginning of another one. But in this case, the current migratory problem is a self-inflicted wound brought about by the Assad regime, and America’s and its allies’ policies of regime change.

The desire to help is human, and universal. Many global organizations embrace the concept of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), which says states forfeit aspects of their sovereignty when they fail to protect their populations from mass atrocities or human rights violations. In that case, it falls on all countries to enforce the R2P. Yet, in this situation, the R2P concept has already failed the Syrian people.

And it shows no sign of improving.

The only solution is to end the perpetual ME war. Western intervention in the region has been a disaster, as far back as the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s. That started this mess with the drawing of arbitrary borders in the ME.

It is now time for locals to take up the R2P.

This means Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt − all ME economic powerhouses with huge armies, have to ally to stamp out the ME hostilities. And to create enforceable ME borders, so that eventually, it will be possible to return today’s refugees to safe areas within their homelands.

Otherwise, the big ME powers will be the ultimate losers in the current ME debacle.

Petraeus Wants to Arm al-Qaeda

(This will be the last column until Sept. 8th, as the Wrongologist goes to work preparing the fields of Wrong for fall. Happy Labor Day!)

General David Petraeus, possible VP candidate on the Moar War ticket, wrote an article in which his bright idea is to arm al-Qaeda in Syria in order to fight ISIS. The Daily Beast reports that Petraeus has been quietly urging US officials to consider using so-called “moderate” members of the al-Nusra Front, a spin-off of al-Qaeda, to fight ISIS in Syria.

Sound familiar? Every neocon has preached this idea since 2011.

The idea stems from Petraeus’ experience in Iraq in 2007, when as part of a broader strategy to defeat an Islamist insurgency, the US persuaded Sunni militias to stop fighting with al Qaeda and to work with the American military. That led to the fiction called the surge, which was compounded by the fiction that says the surge “worked”. But as Emptywheel says: (parenthesis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

Al-Qaeda in Iraq was later reborn as ISIS, [which] has become the sworn enemy of its parent organization. Now, Petraeus is returning to his old play, advocating a strategy of co-opting rank-and-file members of al Nusra, (a spin-off of al-Qaeda) particularly those who don’t necessarily share all of core al Qaeda’s Islamist philosophy.

The concept of arming al-Nusra, which purports to be opposed [in some cases] to our latest enemy ISIS, which itself emerged out of a prior enemy (al-Qaeda in Iraq), ensures we will have an environment of continual enemies, and thus, continual warfare. The “arm one of our enemies to fight another of our enemies” is a bad strategy that keeps getting trotted out, usually by neocons, even though it inevitably leads to more enemies to fight down the line.

Perhaps you remember the Taliban? In an article called “McJihad: Islam in the US Global Order”, Timothy Mitchell reports the following: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

On 3 February 1997, a delegation of the Taliban government of Afghanistan visited Washington, D.C. Ten days earlier Taliban forces had won control of the countryside around Kabul, and with the south and east of the country already in their hands they were now making preparations to conquer the north. In Washington the Taliban delegation met with State Department officials and discussed the plans of the California oil company Unocal to build a pipeline from Central Asia through Afghanistan. A senior U.S. diplomat explained his government’s thinking: “The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.“

The enemy of my enemy strategy didn’t work then, and it won’t work now. The US has always found radical, conservative Islamism preferable to nationalist or communist currents in the Middle East. It has been in bed with Salafi-Wahhabism since the Saudis founded their theocratic, reactionary state. In fact as Tom Friedman said yesterday, current day Wahhabism cannot be understood outside the dynamics of petroleum-based geo-politics.

Perhaps the headline about Gen. Petraeus’s idea should be:

David Petraeus, after overseeing a series of failed training efforts and covert efforts that led to increased radicalization, wants America to try again.

It is one thing to work clandestinely with a few bad guys, and it’s a completely different thing to do so publicly, as Petraeus would like. The Obama administration’s legal backing for fighting ISIS is based on the 2003 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF) which holds:

[t]hat the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

The Department of Defense’s term of art is usually “Al-Qaeda and associated forces” or “affiliated forces” when it describes those defined in the AUMF. How then can we legally claim to fight ISIS under the AUMF when an ally in that fight is the only enemy cited in the AUMF?

And what would be DC’s plan if al-Qaeda actually won?

When ex-generals need to be consulted about foreign policy, our foreign policy has failed.

Turkey Hoodwinked Washington

From the BBC:

The US and Turkey reached an agreement which will see Turkish jets join the air campaign against Islamic State (IS) militants. American officials hailed the agreement as “a significant step forward” in the fight against IS.

The good news was that Turkey would now be fully integrated into the strategy of the wider anti-ISIS coalition. However, as of last week, the Turkish Air Force had conducted 300 strikes against Kurdish targets versus three against ISIS targets. So Turkey, while giving lip service to the war against ISIS, is actually attacking the Kurds, who in this case, are ISIS’s enemies. As we said in our column on 8/25:

The present strategy of the US for defeat of ISIS is ultimately dependent on the Turks. Turkey is the main pathway through which ISIS receives recruits…and [is] the main pathway through which ISIS continues to export oil to raise money.

Turkey has a conflicted relationship with ISIS. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest has a long article describing the problems of Turkey as an ally posted at the American Conservative:

Indeed, when I was in Istanbul last July, bearded rebels were observed in the more fundamentalist neighborhoods collecting money for ISIS without any interference from the numerous and highly visible Turkish police and intelligence services.

Given the state of play that now exists in the ME, Washington was delighted when Turkey announced on July 23rd that it would play a more active role against ISIS. But the euphoria in DC was short lived, as Turkey quickly demonstrated that its partnership with the US was window dressing, as ISIS was not the enemy that Ankara had in mind.

Why the bait-and-switch? Turkey’s domestic politics. Turkey held a parliamentary election on June 5th in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) failed to obtain a majority. Worse still, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which is largely Kurdish, won more than 13% of the vote, much of it consisting of former AKP seats, making it a potential swing party in forming a new government. The AKP couldn’t form a coalition government without the Kurds or a right-wing party, which Erdogan wouldn’t permit, and new elections now seem set for November 1st. Erdogan wants to try again for a substantial AKP majority, which would allow him to amend the constitution, and add significant new powers to his role. Nevertheless, the most recent election demonstrated that AKP had lost some control, and Erdogan had to do something to create a more compelling narrative.

Enter the Kurds.

For three decades, Turkey has been at war with the Kurds, some of whom seek more autonomy within Turkey, while others favor the creation of an independent Kurdish state incorporating parts of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey. 18% of the Turkish population is of Kurdish origin, and are the country’s largest minority.

Even though Turkey has had a cease fire with the most powerful Kurdish dissident group, the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) since 2013, the AKP’s calculation appears to be that more chaos will mean more votes, with people turning to the devil they know in hopes of stability.

And Erdogan chose to attack the Kurds under the aegis of the US-led war on ISIS.

All of this suggests that the US was bamboozled. One American general called the development a “bait and switch,” while another commented that Erdogan “needed a hook” to go after the Kurds, and lied to Washington to get one. Surely, the Pentagon, CIA and White House know that they were all snookered.

When the news broke that Turkey had bombed ISIS and when it mentioned (without comment) the PKK, it was obvious what the Turk’s game really was. And, they are not alone:

Saudi Arabia plays the War on Terror game to get us to help out with Yemen, and to counter Iran.

Israel plays the War on Terror game to keep the $billions coming.

Egypt’s Sisi also plays the War on Terror game to keep US aid coming and to help consolidate his own grip on Egypt.

Our own domestic Fear Machine uses the War on Terror to keep the taxpayer-paid gravy train rolling along.

The only ones not benefiting from some Terror-related play are we, the ~~people~~ suckers. Oh, and the collateral damage to the people in the countries that we and our allies are “liberating.”

See you on Sunday.

Did the AP Promote an Untruth About Iran?

Last Wednesday, PBS NewsHour reported about the Iran nuclear deal, and how it stood with Congress: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Associated Press reports today that under an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate one location it has been accused of using to develop nuclear arms. This comes about halfway through the 60-day period that Congress has to scrutinize the Iran nuclear deal with the U.S. and five other countries…

Sadly, it turned out that this allegation in the AP story was untrue. George Jahn wrote the story, in which he cites a “draft” of an agreement between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran on inspection of Iran’s Parchin site, rumored to be the location of their nuclear weapons program. Further complicating matters, Jahn’s story went through several edits soon after its release.

Fortunately, a report by Max Fisher at Vox walks you through the evolution of Jahn’s story. Fisher relies heavily on Jeffrey Lewis at Arms Control Wonk, who was quick to note the level of duplicity coming from Jahn:

The oldest Washington game is being played in Vienna…And that is leaking what appears to be a prejudicial and one-sided account of a confidential document to a friendly reporter, and using that to advance a particular policy agenda.

What Fisher missed, though, is that George Jahn is the poster child for the type of behavior that Lewis describes. Emptywheel reports that Jahn has been playing precisely this game at AP for years, mostly surrounding Iran and its nuclear program.

In reading about how events evolved after Jahn put up his first version of the story, it pays to look at these events in the light of the usual tennis match of lopsided accusations and the propaganda that develops around it. Iran deal opponents jumped on the story so quickly that it seemed that they had a heads-up regarding when it would go live. Republicans in Congress were able to get their comments on the “secret side deal benefiting Iran” into some of the early revisions of Jahn’s article.

And that may have been the precise reason that Jahn was given the copy of the draft agreement, because his viewpoint was seen as the last, best chance to disrupt the deal in Congress.

One more point needs noting in this context. Deal opponents, as mentioned above, were quick to spin the agreement between the IAEA and Iran as being kept secret because it is such a sweet deal for Iran. That paints the picture that the IAEA is on Iran’s side.

As Vox notes, confidentiality in agreements of this type are the norm.

Juan Cole reports on an email from Gary Sick, an expert on Iran and security, who pointed out that the Accord actually provides for the inspectors of the IAEA always to be present at such inspections. The reason for the presence of Iranian experts is that there is a long history of outside nuclear inspectors being sent in by the Great Powers for espionage. As an example, the 1990s UN inspections of Iraq were infiltrated by US intelligence. So, the Iranian inspectors are there to keep an eye on the UN inspectors, not to cover up Iranian activities (to which the IAEA will have full access).

AP ultimately removed most of its allegations from the story.

Once again this is proof that there is absolutely no downside for a “journalist” to report negative news about Iran (or in the case of the PBS News hour, quickly pass it along). In fact, there is a strong possibility that a serial fabricator like George Jahn will be able to continue to have his work published, even after being proven inaccurate more than once.

One of the problems citizens face in evaluating complex geopolitical issues is that they are often unexplainable in sound bites. This is true for global warming, or for lung cancer from cigarette smoking. It is also true for the Iran deal, which leaves us too easily confused by parties with an agenda. And although many of our journalists are admirable, some people advertised as journalists just aren’t very good – there are always a few Judith Millers (who sold us the Iraq War) with an agenda.

From the reporting leading up to the Iraq War, reporting on Israel in Gaza and now Iran, the US media has a lot to answer for. This was not just careless reporting, since the AP deliberately left out contradictory language from the document they quoted. We need to demand more accurate and unbiased reporting.

This was far from a proud moment for journalism.

Our ISIS Strategy is Undermined by Our Muslim Allies

Pat Lang, a retired Colonel in Military Intelligence and a specialist in the Middle East who taught Arabic at West Point, says at his blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

The present strategy of the US for defeat of ISIS is ultimately dependent on the Turks. Turkey is the main pathway through which ISIS receives recruits…and [is] the main pathway through which ISIS continues to export oil to raise money. Erdogan’s Turkey has until very recently barred the US from the use against ISIS of air bases built and maintained by the US for NATO.

On July 25, The Guardian disclosed that US Special Forces had captured “hundreds of flash drives and documents” when they raided the compound of Islamic State’s financial chief, Abu Sayyaf (May 15-16, 2015). The documents showed there had been widespread collusion by Turkish government officials in the smuggling of oil from ISIS-controlled oil fields in eastern Syria.

Lang goes on to say that Turkey and the US have different expectations and goals: The US wants the bases for the war against ISIS, but the Turks want the downfall of the Assad government in Syria and a buffer against a Kurdish state on their southern border. This aligns Turkey with Saudi Arabia and the Sunni governments in the Gulf. The prospect of a Syria dominated by a Nusra Front-led government does not bother Erdogan. He wants a similar outcome for Turkey if he can get enough seats in parliament to change the Turkish constitution to eliminate its Kemalist secularism.

The Turks also want the US to help them bomb the Kurds (by which Erdogan means all Kurds) into submission. To this end, the Turks will use their own forces and any support they can get from the US and the Europeans. In fact the various Kurdish groups, despite their political and tribal differences are really one people. If the US became complicit in attacks on Kurdish fighters of any kind, it risks the loss of our Kurdish ally in Iraq. From HuffPo:

The US finds itself in a position where a key ally, Turkey, is effectively at war with the one ground force, the Kurds, who, when supported by American air power, have been the most effective in rolling back the Islamic State.

Under these circumstances is it any wonder that the ISIS continues to thrive? The Republican drum beat for more American troops on the ground is not because the jihadis are an existential threat to the US but, rather because they menace civilized life in the Islamic World and potentially, across the rest of the world as well. But without real Turkish cooperation, victory over the ISIS isn’t possible, and the US should not attempt it. More from Col. Lang: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

There will be no Western style Reformation of Islam…Most people reading this do not understand the lack of central religious authority in Islam that leads to this chaos…That lack of central authority, when combined with a mindset that inextricably links religious and political authority creates chaos that can only be resolved by force. We should withdraw from the area and watch in fascinated horror. The Israelis? Well, pilgrims, they have sown the wind…

So, how should our strategy evolve? So long as the US continues to support and play along with our Muslim allies, fighting ISIS is a pointless endeavor. It just digs America deeper into a religious war within Islam without any benefits to us. Once the US is not engaged, we will cease to be manipulated by our erstwhile allies – the Saudis, Turks, Gulf States, and Israelis. At that point, those states will need to concentrate their thinking on matters of their own and regional security.

This would be a smarter strategy than our current plan of kicking the can down the road and believing in unicorns. Analysis by Pat Lang:

…the world has changed; the local has become universal, and the burden of existential misery, caused by overpopulation, climate change, misgovernance, war, poverty and loss of hope, has affected large numbers of people worldwide. Local and temporary “solutions”, especially military ones, will no longer work. And, in fact, are likely to worsen the situation.

Overall, our strategy to assist in the defeat of ISIS has not brought about anything positive. From Rosa Brooks in Foreign Policy:

So far, the US-led military campaign…appears to have achieved few positive results…intelligence sources have reportedly concluded that the Islamic State has not been fundamentally weakened. At best, we are probably prolonging the status quo.

It’s very frustrating that we can’t clear an area the size of Kansas with airpower. Either fight the ISIS all the way, or just leave them the hell alone.

The vote here is to get out of the way.

Monday Wake Up Call – August 24, 2015

There was a curious story in the NYT on Saturday. They quote former Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak in a new biography revealing that Israel came close to striking Iran’s military facilities in 2010, 2011 and 2012. The biographers spoke on Israeli television, saying that despite Barak’s and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s desire to do so, the Israeli military refused.

Recorded interview excerpts between Barak and the biographers were aired by Israel’s Channel 2, which stressed that Mr. Barak had sought to prevent them from being broadcast, but that they had been approved by Israel’s military censor. Mr. Barak later confirmed that the recordings were authentic, but said he had provided the information on background to Ilan Kfir and Danny Dor, whose book, “Barak: The Wars of My Life,” came out this week in Hebrew.

The interviews confirmed a longstanding view that Israel’s security chiefs held back the political leadership, particularly in 2010. In 2012, the timing did not work out because of a joint US-Israel military exercise and visit by Leon Panetta, US defense secretary. Barak said he recalled “demanding” to postpone the joint military exercise. The NYT quotes Barak:

You ask, you demand that America respect your sovereignty to make a decision that you want to do that, even if America is opposed to that and it is against its interests…

The news is that the civilian leadership really wanted to start a war with Iran but first, the military leaders demurred, and then so did the Obama Administration. This confirms that the past 7 years have not been all Israeli bluster intended to play bad cop to our good cop. The bad news is that the administration has known for years that Netanyahu and his administration are off their collective rockers, yet Congress continues to send Israel weapons and billions of dollars every year.

The sad part is that there isn’t anything really new here. It has been well documented previously. Juan Cole reported in 2011 that: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Netanyahu appears to have forced out Meir Dagan, the head of the Israeli spying agency Mossad… Dagan went on to accuse Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, of grossly exaggerating the threat from Iran, calling a [potential] strike on that country “stupid idea that offers no advantage.”

In 2012, apparently Obama stood firm in opposition to an Iran strike, since Israel didn’t have the capability to really damage Iran’s nuclear facilities and needed support from USAF in the form of B-52s and bunker buster bombs. Mr. Obama later compensated Israel for standing down by providing them with the bunker busters.

Here’s a thought worth polishing and spreading: That the unspoken concern of the US and the world is not so much that a nuclear armed Iran might someday attack Israel and further destabilize the ME, but that a nuclear armed Israel is now ready, able, and rehearsing their plans to attack Iran. Imagine for a moment the hysteria in Congress if the headline of this story was reversed: “Khomeini was on the verge of attacking Israel 3 times”.

It’s time to cut Israel loose, to eliminate the undue influence this nation has on American foreign policy.

So, wake up Congress Critters, modeling Netanyahu’s foreign policy behaviors will lead America to failure. To help with the wake-up, here is a photo that shows those in Congress just another example of life in the food chain:

(H/T Naked Capitalism)

Your Monday Hot Links:

This is how Bernie Sanders could win. OK it’s a long shot, but FiveThirtyEight says that if Hillary implodes, Sanders vs. Biden could be highly competitive. Clinton won’t drop out before the primaries and a Biden run could split the establishment vote, giving Sanders an opening.

Billionaires keep flocking to architect Robert A.M. Stern’s newest limestone creation at 220 Central Park South. Next is billionaire hedge funder Ken Griffin, who we mentioned yesterday. Griffin’s new pad could cost him anywhere between $30 million and $160 million, which is really just chump change for the hedge funder who reportedly nets $2.2 million a day, and that’s after taxes!

In a related story in the Onion, a study finds it is easier than ever for American dollars to join the 1%.

First wolf pack found in California in nearly a century. On Aug. 9, the cameras photographed two separate black-furred wolves, believed to be adults. Five black wolf pups were photographed in the same spot. It was clearly a pack.

Doctors may have found a way to override the body’s evolutionary habit of storing fat with a discovery of a master switch for the body’s metabolism. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School discovered a new genetic pathway that controls human metabolism by prompting fat cells to store or burn away fat.

Grading Carly Fiorina’s tenure at HP. By a Silicon Valley journalist.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Middle East Strategy