NEW WARS / OLD WARS – Are You Feeling Safer Now?

A case could be made that US intervention in Iraq – at the request of its government – might be legal (if misguided), should the US Congress resolve to approve it.  However, with or without the assent of the Congress, the attacks inside Syria are violations of international law, regardless of any “coalition of the willing” outside of UN Security Council agreement. But, lawful or not, it is still very foolish. . .

 

STUPID STUFF: America's Never-Ending War in the Middle East

While President Obama continues – at least for now – to resist redeploying large numbers of U.S. soldiers to fight the Islamic State on the ground, the military components of the anti-Islamic State strategy he has laid out effectively recommit the United States to its post-9/11 template for never-ending war in the Middle East. In the end, such an approach can only compound the damage that has already been done to America’s severely weakened strategic position in the Middle East by its previous post-9/11 military misadventures…  Without doubt, there needs to be a regional strategy for dealing with the Islamic State. Obama and his senior advisors pay lip service to this idea. But their notion of a regional strategy encompasses only established and unrepresentative Sunni regimes dependent on Washington for their security – e.g., Saudi Arabia, the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt, and Jordan.    More   

 

Here’s Everything Wrong with the White House’s War on the Islamic State

…with scarcely a whisper of serious debate, Obama has become the fourth consecutive U.S. president to launch a war in Iraq—and in fact has outdone his predecessors by spreading the war to Syria as well…  This was no minor escalation. According to the Washington Post, the United States and its Arab allies dropped more explosives on Syria in their first engagement there than U.S. forces had dropped over all of Iraq in the preceding month. It was the largest single U.S. military operation since NATO’s intervention in Libya was launched back in 2011… It should bother you that this war is illegal and constitutional. But even if you’re fed up with the legal niceties of the UN Security Council and the U.S. Congress, there’s simply no reason to believe that might is going to make right here… Despite Congress’ approval of $500 million in new funds to train and arm other Syrian rebels, the CIA—which has been already been conducting a smaller-scale program in Jordan to do just that—is reportedly deeply skeptical about the plausibility of this plan, with one member of Congress reporting that CIA sources had described it as a “fool’s errand.”  More

 

 

Question for Obama’s Syria plan: Who are the 'moderate' rebels?

The FSA is currently the weakest force on the ground in Syria, a result not only of inadequate foreign backing compared with that of rival Islamist and extremist factions, but of its own internal divisions, byzantine leadership structure (based in Turkey) and rampant corruption… Even some of the FSA’s top commanders admit the group no longer enjoys the confidence of Syria's political opposition. In an interview with the Washington Post, one commander called U.S. efforts to patch together the FSA’s disparate brigades into a united army a "cut and paste of previous FSA failures." … Many Syrians who detest Assad are nonetheless unconvinced by any of the armed groups waging the war, which has claimed nearly 200,000 lives, a toll that is climbing. FSA brigades have been accused of human rights abuses, such as executing its prisoners and looting. And, Syrians say, the rebels’ military strategy has increasingly involved destroying the country’s infrastructure, alienating even many anti-Assad Syrians.    More

 

U.S., anti-Assad rebels in Syria remain at odds over role of al Qaida’s Nusra Front

To the United States and its allies, the Nusra Front is a fearsome al Qaida affiliate whose extremist ideology has no place in a future Syria.  To many Syrian rebels, however, Nusra fighters are vital warriors in the battle to topple President Bashar Assad, even if the moderates don’t share the group’s end goal of a religious state. This disconnect has existed since the early days of the Syrian conflict, when the Obama administration first designated Nusra a foreign terrorist organization… The moves infuriated rebels and puzzled some analysts, who questioned the wisdom of attacking groups that, however distasteful, remain the vanguard of the anti-Assad fight… The risk of empowering an al Qaida affiliate is a small price to pay for Nusra’s contributions on the battlefield, said Jeffrey White, a former senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who’s now with the [AIPAC-founded] Washington Institute for Near East Policy… The U.S.-backed opposition coalition’s leader called on the United States to reconsider the designation, more than two dozen rebel factions signed a petition of support for Nusra, and thousands more took to the streets in protest, some carrying signs that read, “We are all Nusra Front.”     More

 

Beheadings v. Drone Assassinations

Why do Americans hate beheadings but love drone killings? What accounts for our irrational response to these two very different forms of illegal execution, one very profitable and high-tech, usually resulting in many collateral deaths and injuries, and the other very low-tech, but provoking fear and righteous condemnation from the citizens whose country prefers the high-tech?  … there’s reason to question that being killed by drone bombs is any less horrible  then death by beheading. Some drone pilots have talked about watching those they’ve hit try crawling away with severed limbs or lie bleeding to death for hours.  More

 

The War the Pentagon Was Hoping For

As the U.S. escalates its bombing campaign against ISIS (or IS or ISIL), U.S. officials seem to have found an enemy we can all love to hate and fear.  ISIS beheads hostages, conducts brutal ethnic cleansing and has links to Al-Qaeda.  DC power players have eagerly embraced a small war made to order to restore America's wounded military pride after the first Iraq debacle.  The contrived nature of the narrative presented by U.S. officials was evident from the outset if one cared to look behind the propaganda screen…  For Americans, this campaign brings together many of the familiar themes of the history of U.S. military expansion since the end of the Cold War, and it raises many of the same questions and problems.  U.S. officials are evidently encouraged by similarities to the 1991 First Gulf War, a model they revere but have failed to replicate: an unpopular enemy; a limited objective; domestic political support; a broad international coalition to do the fighting and pay for it; and the promise of "victory" over a villainous enemy to win the acclaim of a grateful world.   More

 

Defense Contractors Are Making a Killing

Stock prices for Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman set all-time record highs last week as it became increasingly clear that President Obama was committed to a massive, sustained air war in Iraq and Syria. It’s nothing short of a windfall for these and other huge defense contractors, who’ve been getting itchy about federal budget pressures that threatened to slow the rate of increase in military spending. Now, with U.S. forces literally blowing through tens of millions of dollars of munitions a day, the industry is not just counting on vast spending to replenish inventory, but hoping for a new era of reliance on supremely expensive military hardware. More

 

Dog Bites, Workplace Accidents Killed More Americans Than Terrorism Last Year

With the Middle East grabbing headlines, many Americans are concerned about terrorism. A CNN poll [3] from earlier this month found that 53% of Americans are concerned that there will be terrorist attacks, up from 39% in 2011. But while fear of terrorism has skyrocketed, the facts are that few Americans are ever injured or killed by an act of terror, and our country has blown the threat of violence from terrorists way out of proportion. In fact, dog bites actually killed more Americans last year than terrorism—with 32 fatalities from dogs [4] logged by non-profit DogBites.org and eight fatalities from domestic terror attacks [5] (according to the University of Maryland Global Terrorism Database) and 16 from attacks overseas [6] (according to the State Department).   More

 

The War Against ISIS Could Cost American Taxpayers $1.5 Billion A Month

"On an annual basis, I estimate the operations will cost somewhere between $15 and $20 billion," Gordon Adams, a professor of U.S. foreign policy at American University, told The Huffington Post… The majority of the $15 to $20 billion total comes from airstrikes, which Adams estimates will cost about $8 billion a year… On Thursday, the Pentagon estimated the cost of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Syria to be roughly $7 million to $10 million per day -- or about $210 million to $300 million per month.  More

 

We Could Have Hired 10,000 Teachers– Instead, We Got a War

Our war against ISIS has already cost between $780 and $930 million so far, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. That is enough money to hire 10,000 teachers to work for a year.  That, of course, represents only a fraction of the money we will spend on a operation President Obama warned could take years. Depending on the style of the military engagement the center estimates this latest war could cost ‘as little’ as $2.4 billion a year, if it is only low intensity air operations, or as much as $22 billion a year if it requires a large ground contingent.  More

 

Why Obama’s assurance of ‘no boots on the ground’ isn’t so reassuring

Here’s what “no boots on the ground” apparently doesn’t mean: It doesn’t mean that no U.S. troops will be sent to Iraq or Syria. Reportedly there are already 1,600 U.S. military personnel in Iraq. True, they’re present in an “advisory” role, not in a combat role — but surely one lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan is that combat has a habit of finding its way to noncombat personnel… It’s also hard to know what publicly reported troop numbers really mean. When the Pentagon issues a Boots on the Ground report (known colloquially as a “BOG report”), it often excludes military personnel on “temporary duty” in combat areas, even though temporary duty may mean an assignment spanning five or six months. Similarly, Special Operations personnel assigned to work under CIA auspices are often left out of the BOG numbers. This makes it hard to know just who’s being counted when officials say there are 1,600 military personnel in Iraq.    More

 

Poll: 70% of troops say no more boots on the ground in Iraq

As the tide of war rises again in the Middle East, the military’s rank and file are mostly opposed to expanding the new mission in Iraq and Syria to include sending a large number of U.S. ground troops into combat, according to a Military Times survey of active-duty members...  The reader survey asked more than 2,200 active-duty troops this question: “In your opinion, do you think the U.S. military should send a substantial number of combat troops to Iraq to support the Iraqi security forces?” Slightly more than 70 percent responded: “No.”  “It’s their country, it’s their business. I don’t think major ‘boots on the ground’ is the right answer,” said one Army infantry officer and prior-enlisted soldier who deployed to Iraq three times.   More