It Looks Like al-Baghdadi Is Dead - But ISIS Is Not

(Photo of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, from The Washington Post, is by Al-Furqan Media.)

Donald Trump announced on Sunday morning that U.S. soldiers had killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. If that is true (and I have no reason to believe it is not), then that is a good thing. He was a vicious leader who cared nothing about innocent lives.

United States intelligence services and soldiers deserve our thanks for a job well done.

But there is still danger for citizens around the world. While al-Baghdadi may be dead, ISIS is not. I hope Trump, who has demonstrated he is not very smart and doesn't understand foreign relations, doesn't think the danger is gone. The caliphate is gone and another ISIS leader is dead, but thousands of dedicated ISIS members remain, and they have a huge potential for terrorist activity in the future.

We learned this lesson after the death of Osama bin-Laden. His death did not eliminate the threat from al-Queda. In fact, al-Queda is growing thanks to the war in Yemen (where is is supported by Saudi money and Saudi-supplied U.S. arms).

Religious-based terrorist groups cannot be eliminated by killing one person -- not matter how high in their leadership he was. They consider their leader to be god, and another human (who claims to know what god wants) will quickly replace the fallen human leader.

Even though al-Baghdadi and bin-Laden are dead, ISIS and al-Queda are not. Only a fool would think the danger is gone.

Trump's Withdrawal Is The Best Thing For ISIS In Months

(Cartoon image is by Jimmy Margulies at jimmymargulies.com.)



Donald Trump's abrupt and senseless withdrawal from northern Syria is disastrous for our best allies in that area -- the Kurds. It allows them to become the victims of ethnic cleansing by Turkey -- who is forcibly removing them from their homeland and replacing them with Arabs.

There are also some winners from Trump's actions -- notably Turkey, Syria, and Russia (who is now going to help Turkey kick the Kurds out. And there is another big winner -- ISIS. Trump continues to brag about how he has defeated ISIS, but his action gives ISIS the best chance they have had to come back and be a danger to the rest of the world -- including the United States.

The following is part of an op-ed on the situation by David D. Kirkpatrick (pictured on upper left) and Eric Schmitt (pictured on upper right) in The New York Times:

American forces and their Kurdish-led partners in Syria had been conducting as many as a dozen counterterrorism missions a day against Islamic State militants, officials said. That has stopped.

Those same partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, had also been quietly releasing some Islamic State prisoners and incorporating them into their ranks, in part as a way to keep them under watch. That, too, is now in jeopardy. 

And across Syria’s porous border with Iraq, Islamic State fighters are conducting a campaign of assassination against local village headmen, in part to intimidate government informants. 

When President Trump announced this month that he would pull American troops out of northern Syria and make way for a Turkish attack on the Kurds, Washington’s onetime allies, many warned that he was removing the spearhead of the campaign to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Now, analysts say that Mr. Trump’s pullout has handed the Islamic State its biggest win in more than four years and greatly improved its prospects. With American forces rushing for the exits, in fact, American officials said last week that they were already losing their ability to collect critical intelligence about the group’s operations on the ground. 

“There is no question that ISIS is one of the big winners in what is happening in Syria,” said Lina Khatib, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, a research center in London.

Cutting support for the Syrian Democratic Forces has crippled the ability of the United States and its former partners to hunt down the group’s remnants.

News of the American withdrawal set off jubilation among Islamic State supporters on social media and encrypted chat networks. It has lifted the morale of fighters in affiliates as far away as Libya and Nigeria.

And, by removing a critical counterforce, the pullout has eased the re-emergence of the Islamic State’s core as a terrorist network or a more conventional, and potentially long-lasting, insurgency based in Syria and Iraq.

Although Mr. Trump has repeatedly declared victory over the Islamic State — even boasting to congressional leaders last week that he had personally “captured ISIS” — it remains a threat. After the loss in March of the last patch of the territory it once held across Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State dispersed its supporters and fighters to blend in with the larger population or to hide out in remote deserts and mountains.

The group retains as many as 18,000 “members” in Iraq and Syria, including up to 3,000 foreigners, according to estimates cited in a recent Pentagon report. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph, is still at large.

President Obama Schools Trump On "Magic" Words

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly said that one of the main reasons we aren't defeating ISIS is because President Obama won't use the phrase "radical islamic terrorists". It is a stupid idea to think there are some magic words that will defeat ISIS, but Trump crowds love the idea (proving they are not very bright).

President Obama addressed this stupidity on Tuesday afternoon. Here is the part of his speech on ISIS where he denounces Trump's insane idea:

For a while now, the main contribution of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have made in the fight against ISIL is to criticize this administration and me for not using the phrase “radical Islam.”  That’s the key, they tell us -- we can’t beat ISIL unless we call them “radical Islamists.”  What exactly would using this label accomplish?  What exactly would it change?  Would it make ISIL less committed to trying to kill Americans?  Would it bring in more allies?  Is there a military strategy that is served by this?  The answer is none of the above.  Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away.  This is a political distraction.  Since before I was President, I’ve been clear about how extremist groups have perverted Islam to justify terrorism.  As President, I have repeatedly called on our Muslim friends and allies at home and around the world to work with us to reject this twisted interpretation of one of the world’s great religions.

There has not been a moment in my seven and a half years as President where we have not been able to pursue a strategy because we didn’t use the label "radical Islam."  Not once has an advisor of mine said, man, if we really use that phrase, we're going to turn this whole thing around.  Not once.  So if someone seriously thinks that we don’t know who we're fighting, if there's anyone out there who thinks we're confused about who our enemies are, that would come as a surprise to the thousands of terrorists who we've taken off the battlefield. 

If the implication is that those of us up here and the thousands of people around the country and around the world who are working to defeat ISIL aren't taking the fight seriously, that would come as a surprise to those who have spent these last seven and a half years dismantling al Qaeda in the FATA, for example -- including the men and women in uniform who put their lives at risk and the Special Forces that I ordered to get bin Laden and are now on the ground in Iraq and in Syria.  They know full well who the enemy is.  So do the intelligence and law enforcement officers who spend countless hours disrupting plots and protecting all Americans, including politicians who tweet and appear on cable news shows.  They know who the nature of the enemy is.

So there’s no magic to the phrase “radical Islam.”  It’s a political talking point; it's not a strategy.  And the reason I am careful about how I describe this threat has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with actually defeating extremism.  Groups like ISIL and al Qaeda want to make this war a war between Islam and America, or between Islam and the West.  They want to claim that they are the true leaders of over a billion Muslims around the world who reject their crazy notions.  They want us to validate them by implying that they speak for those billion-plus people; that they speak for Islam.  That’s their propaganda.  That's how they recruit.  And if we fall into the trap of painting all Muslims with a broad brush and imply that we are at war with an entire religion -- then we’re doing the terrorists' work for them.

Now, up until this point, this argument about labels has mostly just been partisan rhetoric.  And, sadly, we've all become accustomed to that kind of partisanship, even when it involves the fight against these extremist groups.  And that kind of yapping has not prevented folks across government from doing their jobs, from sacrificing and working really hard to protect the American people. 

But we are now seeing how dangerous this kind of mindset and this kind of thinking can be.  We're starting to see where this kind of rhetoric and loose talk and sloppiness about who exactly we're fighting, where this can lead us.  We now have proposals from the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States to bar all Muslims from emigrating to America.  We hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests that entire religious communities are complicit in violence.  Where does this stop?  The Orlando killer, one of the San Bernardino killers, the Fort Hood killer -- they were all U.S. citizens. 

Are we going to start treating all Muslim Americans differently?  Are we going to start subjecting them to special surveillance?  Are we going to start discriminating against them because of their faith?  We’ve heard these suggestions during the course of this campaign.  Do Republican officials actually agree with this?  Because that's not the America we want.  It doesn't reflect our democratic ideals.  It won’t make us more safe; it will make us less safe -- fueling ISIL’s notion that the West hates Muslims, making young Muslims in this country and around the world feel like no matter what they do, they're going to be under suspicion and under attack.  It makes Muslim Americans feel like they're government is betraying them.  It betrays the very values America stands for. 

We've gone through moments in our history before when we acted out of fear -- and we came to regret it.  We've seen our government mistreat our fellow citizens.  And it has been a shameful part of our history. 

This is a country founded on basic freedoms, including freedom of religion.  We don't have religious tests here.  Our Founders, our Constitution, our Bill of Rights are clear about that.  And if we ever abandon those values, we would not only make it a lot easier to radicalize people here and around the world, but we would have betrayed the very things we are trying to protect -- the pluralism and the openness, our rule of law, our civil liberties -- the very things that make this country great; the very things that make us exceptional.  And then the terrorists would have won.  And we cannot let that happen.  I will not let that happen.

Noam Chomsky Is A Voice Of Reason On How To Fight ISIS

(Note - This photo of Noam Chomsky is by Duncan Rawlinson.)

The following is part of an interview with America's foremost leftist by Melissa Parker at Smashing Interviews Magazine. It's a great interview that covers several subjects, and I urge you to read the whole interview. What I am posting below is just the section of the interview concerning ISIS.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): ISIS attacked Paris last November and just recently claimed 10 lives in Istanbul, Turkey, in a major tourist area. What should be done to combat ISIS?

Noam Chomsky: The first thing we have to do is understand what it is and where it’s coming from. Scott Atran, for example, has done extensive work investigating the appeal of ISIS, studying ISIS members, former members and the communities in which they draw support. It’s a very important phenomenon. It’s a monstrosity. There’s no doubt about that. But where does that monstrosity come from? If you look back, it comes largely from the United States invasion of Iraq which destroyed the country, killed hundreds of thousands of people, created a couple of million refugees and incited a sectarian conflict. There was none before in Iraq. There were disagreements between two protestant sects or something, but the country was integrated. Shiites and Sunni families lived in the same neighborhoods.

One of the consequences of the invasion was to instigate a sectarian conflict which was tearing the country and region apart. And one of the out-groups of it was Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Out of that came ISIS. That was one factor. The other factor in the development of ISIS is Saudi Arabia which is an extremist, fundamentalist, Islamic state, the most extreme in the world and far more than Iran. Furthermore, it’s a missionary state. They have plenty of resources because of the oil, so they put huge resources into trying to expand their extremist Wahhabi and Salafi doctrine by direct funding of Jihadist groups not excluding ISIS, but also by funding koranic schools. Madrassa is an Islamic religious school and where the Taliban comes from.

Journalist Patrick Cockburn calls the rise of the Islamic state as one of the most dangerous developments of the modern era. That’s another factor. ISIS is an extremist offshoot of the Wahhabi version of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, our ally. The Sunni populations in Syria and Iraq where ISIS is based may hate ISIS, but they also see it as a protector. In these horrible sectarian conflicts that have been instigated, they see it as a kind of protector and a source of stability. That’s the same way lots of people in Afghanistan think that the Taliban were protecting themselves from the extremists Mujahideen, mujahid elements that the United States has been supporting.

If you look elsewhere, say in France or other countries where the Jihadists are coming from, they are coming from seriously oppressed neighborhoods where people are humiliated and degraded. There’s a racist contempt for them. They live without hope, without any chance of entering the society they come from in countries which have been devastated by French atrocities for well over a century, Algerians and other parts of West Africa.

They’re very bitter, young people who want something in life. They want something. They want some cause. They want something that will give them dignity. That’s where the Jihadists are coming from. Most of them come from backgrounds with very little Islamic background. They don’t know the Koran or anything at all. They’re just looking for something in their lives, and that’s drawing them to it.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): So in a sense, you’re saying that we need to really examine the psychology behind these terrorist groups?

Noam Chomsky: The first thing we have to do in combatting ISIS is understanding what all this is about. Not just screaming imprecations, but asking what it’s about. Undoubtedly they commit horrible atrocities, but we’re not exactly immune to that. Belgium is now one of the countries suffering from the offshoots of Islamic terrorism. What’s its record? The potentially richest colony in Africa which could have led Africa to enormous development is a Congo that was run by the Belgians. They were just slaughtering people, maybe 10 million people, because they weren’t bringing in enough rubber.

In 1960, Congo was liberated. It had a very promising young nationalist leader, probably the most promising one in Africa who campaigned for independence from Belgium, named Patrice Lumumba. He could have led Congo on with its enormous resources to help the development of Africa. So what happened? The Belgians murdered him. The CIA was under orders to murder him, but the Belgians got there first. They didn’t just murder him. After he was murdered, his body was hacked to pieces and dissolved in sulfuric acid. There’s plenty of stuff like that, so I could go on and on. But we have to understand those things. We do not like to look at them, but we need to understand them.

If we do understand them, we’ll begin to treat ISIS at its roots. We’ll ask where it’s coming from, and we will deal with those problems. It is a monstrosity. We should undoubtedly support anyone who’s defending themselves against ISIS crimes like the Kurds and Syria definitely. Take Turkey where the ISIS crimes take place today. It has been allowing jihadists to flow into ISIS territories right across its borders. It has been allowing funding for ISIS. It has been openly supporting Jihadi groups different from ISIS like the al-Nusra Front. Well, okay. That’s not part of ancient history. That’s today. We have to look at those things.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): But the answer is not US military intervention?

Noam Chomsky: There are plenty of ways to combat ISIS seriously, but not by Ted Cruz’s carpet bombing. In fact, hit any of these things with a sledgehammer and you’ll make it worse. There’s a long record that shows that when you attack radical insurgencies or even individual terrorists with violence, you usually end up with something much worse. That’s the Ted Cruz reaction.

If you want to be serious about it, you’ll follow the proposals of people like Scott Atran and William Polk who understand the actual circumstances and who pay attention to the nature of their roots and who come up with pretty sound proposals. Polk worked many years at the highest level of US government planning as well as being a very good Middle East specialist. The proposals are sensible. They’re not dramatic. They’re not like carpet bombing which kind of sounds good until you think about what the consequences would be.

Just take a look at the records of the last 15 years. The last 15 years is what’s called the “Global War on Terror.” The method that has been used in the “Global War On Terror” is violence. That’s what we’re good at. Violence. So we invade. We kill people with drones. We have all kinds of ways of killing people. What has been the effect? Take a look. Fifteen years ago terrorist groups were concentrated in a small tribal area in Afghanistan. That was it. Where are the now? All over the world.

The worst terrorist crimes are going on in West Africa with Boko Haram, a lot of which is an offshoot of the bombing in Syria. They’re in West Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia. They carry out attacks in Turkey, in Paris and so on. We’ve succeeded in spreading it from a little corner of tribal Afghanistan to most of the world. It’s a great achievement for the use of violence. Can we draw some lessons from that? Yeah. We can.

Donald Trump's Bigotry Gives Aid And Comfort To ISIS

(This image of Donald Trump is from the website of Matthew Rozsa.)

ISIS is not the massive organization that some politicians would like you to believe it is. They only have a few thousand adherents out of the more than a billion muslims worldwide. Just to hang on to the territory they currently control, they depend on their recruiters supplying them with a continuing supply of new fighters -- and they know that to actually win what they want, they need a massive amount of muslims to come over to their side. And to do that, they need to convince muslims that they are hated by the Western nations. Sadly, Donald Trump's obvious bigotry as he runs for president of the most powerful of the Western nations, is giving ISIS recruiters exactly what they need.

Here is how Justin Salhani describes it in Think Progress:

In what might be his most incendiary statement to date, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump put out a press release Monday calling for the U.S. to bar entry to Muslims, including American Muslims, from entering the United States until further notice.

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” a campaign press release said. A campaign spokesperson told The Hill that this proposal would include American Muslims reentering the country after traveling abroad.

Trump’s latest proposal is driven with national security in mind.  A couple in San Bernardino, California went on a killing spree last week, killing 14 people. ISIS later claimed the couple as followers, while authorities say the wife pledged allegiance to the group on her Facebook page prior to the attacks. In the wake of the San Bernardino shooting and with the Paris attacks still fresh in mind, Trump claims that Muslims pose a “dangerous threat.”

While Trump assumes that stopping Muslims from entering the U.S. would boost domestic security, experts say such rhetoric bolsters the message of extremist groups like ISIS and, in correlation, increases animosity and potential retribution attacks against the U.S.

“This is precisely what ISIS was aiming for — to provoke communities to commit actions against Muslims,” Arie Kruglanski, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland who researches what motivates people to become terrorists, told the Washington Post. “Then ISIS will be able to say, ‘I told you so. These are your enemies, and the enemies of Islam.’”

One of ISIS’ primary talking points is about eliminating the “grayzone” of coexistence between Muslims and western society. ISIS gains support by convincing vulnerable youths prone to ideological radicalization that the west has an aversion to Islam and, by extension, their families, their various cultures and societies, and them as individuals.

“Muslims in the West will soon find themselves between one of two choices,” the group published in their online magazine, Dabiq.

Other statements released in Dabiq praised George W. Bush’s words in the aftermath of 9/11. “Bush spoke the truth when he said, ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.’ I.e. either you are with the crusade or you are with Islam.”

During a reporting trip to Tripoli, Lebanon last year I met the family of Khaled, an 18-year-old who traveled to Iraq and performed a suicide operation for ISIS.

Interviews with his mother, eldest brother, mentor, and others shed light on a man driven by his perception of injustice against Sunnis in Iraq.

“He was a kid, a child,” Mohammad, his brother, told me. “He saw Sunni oppression in Iraq and he told me: ‘The American army is killing us. [Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali] al-Sistani and Shiite groups are killing us. The Iraqi government is killing us, oppressing us and raping women and killing kids. I want to kill them all.’”

His perception that the world is against Sunnis and contributes to their denigration, pushed him to run away from home and join ISIS. All of Khaled’s family and friends that I spoke to said his actions went against their beliefs, but that they still perceived the west as hostile to Islam. Statements like Trump’s latest only reinforce that perception and potentially influences people who are susceptible to ISIS propaganda.

“This matters…the world watches this. The world sees the leading political candidate from one party making these kind of statements and still doing well and having these rallies,” NBC’s Richard Engel told Rachel Maddow on Monday. “Those are going around the world right now, and people realize this person is leading in the polls. That must be what Americans think. I was today with an Ambassador from the Middle East.”

“And he said, well, people in our country watch what is going on, and it makes us very concerned,” Engel said. “So from the world perspective, it is absolutely an image, an impression, a black spot on our collective foreign policy and our conscience. And it also just feeds into the ISIS narrative.”

"Mission Creep" Is Alive And Well - More U.S. Troops For Iraq

(This image of ISIS troops is from ndtv.com.)

Poll after poll is asking these days whether the United States should send ground troops to Iraq/Syria. They are asking the wrong question. What they should be asking is how many troops the public is willing to send to that conflict -- because we already have about 3,000 "boots on the ground" in that war, and we will soon have more.

The government just announced that more "special operations" troops are being sent to Iraq. They didn't say how many, but most media sources put it as between 200 and 450 more soldiers. And the military officials said they wouldn't hesitate to ask for more troops "if needed" (and you can bet they'll think they are needed).

I probably sound like a broken record to regular readers, but I am beginning to be reminded of the Vietnam War -- where we started with a few Special Forces soldiers, and thanks to mission creep, wound up with hundreds of thousands of troops in that country. Are we committing that tragic mistake again?

I don't think we should have any American troops at all in Iraq/Syria. This is a religious civil war, and if it must be fought at all, it should be fought by those countries in that region -- the countries most affected by the threat of ISIS. The MOST we should be doing is giving air support and arms to those willing to fight ISIS.

I know our politicians are trying to frame this growing war effort in Iraq/Syria as a war on terrorism. I don't buy it. Even if ISIS is defeated in a land war, that will not stop their terrorist efforts. It will probably increase it. Terrorists can always find a place to hide, train, and plan their terrorist operations -- and thinking a land war in Iraq/Syria will stop ISIS terrorism is just wishful thinking.

But I seem to be in a minority. We are already fighting in that war, and now the question we should probably be asking is how we are going to do that. Robert Reich (on his own blog) has listed five prerequisites for waging this new war. It's a fairly reasonable assessment. He says:

We appear to be moving ever closer toward a world war against the Islamic State. 

No sane person welcomes war. Yet if we do go to war against ISIS we must keep a watchful eye on 5 things:

1. The burden of fighting the war must be widely shared among Americans. 

America’s current “all-volunteer” army is comprised largely of lower-income men and women for whom army pay is the best option. 

“We’re staring at the painful story of young people with fewer options bearing the greatest burden,“ Greg Speeter, executive director of the National Priorities Project, told the Washington Post. NPP’s study found low- and middle-income families supply far more Army recruits than families with incomes greater than $60,000 a year.

That’s not fair. Moreover, when the vast majority of Americans depend on a small number of people to fight wars for us, the public stops feeling the toll such wars take.

From World War II until the final days of the Vietnam War, in January 1973, nearly every young man in America faced the prospect of being drafted into the Army. 

Sure, many children of the rich found means to stay out of harm’s way. But the draft at least spread responsibility and heightened the public’s sensitivity to the human costs of war. 

If we go into a ground war against ISIS, we should seriously consider reinstating the draft. 

2. We must not sacrifice our civil liberties.  

U.S. spy agencies no longer have authority they had in the post-9/11 USA Patriot Act to collect Americans’ phone and other records. The NSA must now gain court approval for such access. 

But in light of the Paris attacks, the FBI director and other leading U.S. law enforcement officials now say they need access to encrypted information on smartphones, personal and business records of suspected terrorists, and “roving wiretaps” of suspects using multiple disposable cell phones. 

War can also lead to internment of suspects and suspensions of constitutional rights, as we’ve painfully witnessed. 

Donald Trump says he’d require American Muslims to register in a federal data base, and he refuses to rule out requiring all Muslims to carry special religious identification.

"We’re going to have to do things that we never did before….we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago,” he adds.

We must be vigilant that we maintain the freedoms we are fighting for.

3. We must minimize the deaths of innocent civilians abroad. 

The bombing raids have already claimed a terrible civilian toll, contributing to a mass exodus of refugees. 

Last month the independent monitoring group Airwars said at least 459 civilians have died from coalition airstrikes in Syria over the past year. Other monitoring groups, including the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also claim significant civilian deaths.

Some civilian casualties are unavoidable. But we must ensure they are minimized – and not just out of humanitarian concern. Every civilian death creates more enemies. 

And we must do our part to take in a fair portion of Syrian refugees. 

4. We must not tolerate anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States. 

Already, leading Republican candidates are fanning the flames. 

Ben Carson says no Muslim should be president. 

Trump says “thousands” of Arab-Americans cheered when the Twin Towers went down on 9/11 – a boldface lie. 

Ted Cruz wants to accept Christians refugees from Syrian but not Muslims.

Jeb Bush says American assistance for refugees should focus on Christians.

Marco Rubio wants to close down “any place where radicals are being inspired,” including American mosques.

It’s outrageous that leading Republican candidates for president of the United States are fueling such hate. 

Such bigotry is not only morally odious. It also plays into the hands of ISIS.

5. The war must be paid for with higher taxes on the rich. 

A week before the terrorist attacks in Paris, the Senate passed a $607 billion defense spending bill, with 91 senators in favor and 3 opposed (including Bernie Sanders). The House has already passed it, 370 to 58. Obama has said he’ll sign it. 

That defense appropriation is larded with pork for military contractors – including Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive weapons system in history.

Now Republicans are pushing for even more military spending. 

We cannot let them use the war as a pretext to cut Social Security and Medicare, or programs for the poor. 

The war should be paid for the way we used to pay for wars – with higher taxes, especially on the wealthy. 

As we move toward war against ISIS, we must be vigilant – to fairly allocate the burdens of who’s called on to fight the war, to protect civil liberties, to protect innocent civilians abroad, to avoid hate and bigotry, and to fairly distribute the cost of paying for war. 

These aren’t just worthy aims. They are also the foundations of our nation’s strength. 

Russia And United States Should Both Get Out Of Mid-East

(Photo is from the website of ABC News.)

The United States is not the only super-power involved in the ongoing war in the Middle East now. The Russians have decided to jump in, and have already sent weapons and troops to the area -- and that has politicians of both U.S. political parties whining loudly (saying Russia is only interested in saving the Syrian dictator).

Both the United States and Russia claim they are going to save the world from ISIS, and from terrorism. That is ridiculous. ISIS is not a real threat outside the Middle East, and terrorism can be handled much better in a different way (diplomacy, intelligence-gathering, and law enforcement).The truth is that both want to be seen as "savior" of the Middle East.

And neither can accomplish that rather suspect goal. Both countries will be viewed as outsiders invading the muslim world (and in the case of the U.S., christian invaders attacking muslim countries). And that, combined with the killing of innocent civilians (which both will do) can only increase muslim opposition -- and help the ISIS efforts to recruit even more people to their cause.

The sad fact is that both Russian and U.S. involvement just make the situation worse. ISIS is a problem for the Middle East countries -- and it must be solved by those countries. Right now, those countries are not involved in the fight (or have only a very minimal involvement). They are still involved in the Sunni-Shiite debate, and won't enter because they don't want to help or hinder the faction they oppose or support.

But if the United States and Russia weren't involved, these countries would have to step up and handle the ISIS threat themselves -- and ISIS is a radical group that would love to take over the entire Middle East (both Sunni and Shiite countries). They don't respect either muslim faction, and the countries in that region know that. They just are happy to let the Russians and Americans do their fighting for them.

Could ISIS win if the United States and Russia weren't involved? Those two countries will say yes, but I doubt that's true. If the super-powers get out of the way, the other muslim countries would have to get involved (because they know ISIS will take them on one by one) -- and those countries have many more troops and much more firepower than ISIS does, and they would be fighting for their own survival.

This situation won't be solved as long as the United States and Russia are involved. They both need to leave, and let the muslim countries handle the problem. They are the only ones who can.

Public Believes U.S. Ground Troops Will Be Sent To Iraq

The chart above was made from information in a new NBC News / Wall Street Journal / Annenberg Poll that was done between September 19th and 25th of a random national sample of 1,283 registered voters, with a margin of error of 3.15 points.

President Obama has promised Americans that the United States will not have "boots on the ground" in Iraq or Syria to fight ISIS. That is not true, of course -- since we already have around 1,000 troops (and maybe a little more) that are already stationed in Iraq. The president avoids admitting these troops have their "boots on the ground" by labeling them as advisors, trainers, or protectors (of our embassy and the Baghdad airport) instead of combat troops. But they are there, they are armed, and they are in harm's way.

And as the chart shows, nearly three out of four Americans (72%) believe the United States will eventually send ground combat troops to fight ISIS in that region (even though only 45% would support that, even if the military said it was necessary). I think they are right. We are already witnessing "mission creep" in that area.

The president started by sending 300 American troops to Iraq, and that has now grown to around 1,000 or more. Then he started using American forces to bomb ISIS in Iraq, and has now expanded that to include targets in Syria. And finally, he has the approval of Congress to arm and train "moderate" Syrian rebels (in spite of the fact that we don't know who these moderate rebels might be). The logical next would be for the pentagon to request ground combat troops, and for the president (along with Congress) to grant that request.

Our government, including too many members of both political parties, seems to believe that the military arm of ISIS poses a danger to the United States, and that we must protect our "ally" (the Iraqi government). Neither of those things is true. ISIS troops pose no danger to this country. While ISIS could pose a terrorist danger, defeating their troops in Iraq and Syria would not lessen that danger -- it would only increase it. And although our government wants to think Iraq is an American ally, that is just wishful thinking. Iraq's closest ally is Iran (a sworn enemy of the United States).

We are steadily marching toward a new, unnecessary, endless, and undeclared war in the Middle East -- a war we cannot win and cannot afford. We must stop this insanity now.